Alison S. M. Kobayashi is an award-winning interdisciplinary artist whose hybrid work mixes documentary and fiction through video, performance, installation, interactivity, and illustration. Kobayashi was born in Mississauga, Ontario where she graduated with high distinction from the University of Toronto at Mississauga and is now based in Brooklyn.
Her performance Say Something Bunny! received critical acclaim and was heralded as "The best new theater experience in town" by Vogue, was a New York Times critic’s pick, was listed in Time Out’s 2017 top ten productions and BOMB’s Best of Performance list in 2018. Kobayashi has received nominations for a 2018 Drama Desk award and 2019 United Solo Special Award and is the recipient of the 2006 TSV Artistic Vision Award. She was a guest artist at the 2008 Flaherty Film Seminar and her work was the focus of a Spotlight Presentation at Video Out, Jakarta International Film Festival. She has received grants from NYSCA, Toronto Arts Council, and Ontario Arts Council.
Her video work has been exhibited internationally at both museums and performance and film festivals, including Bilbao International Film Festival, The Western Front (Vancouver), The Power Plant (Toronto) and Pace Digital Gallery (NYC) and Les Subsistances (Lyon). She has been both a Yaddo and MacDowell Fellow and a guest artist at the 2008 Flaherty Film Seminar.
Since 2012, she’s been producing Special Projects at UnionDocs, a Center for Documentary Art. There, she collaborates on expansive documentary projects like “Living Los Sures,” which New York Film Festival described as “one of the most comprehensive, incredible and in-depth interactive projects that we at the film society have ever seen.”
At MacDowell in 2016, Kobayashi developed a one channel video based on her live performance and exhibition, Say Something Bunny!. During her 2023 residence, she developed her performance Electric Neon Clock for which she received a 2022 Canada Council Research Grant and NYSCA Individual Project Grant to produce.
