ABOUT COLLEEN KELLY POPLIN.

ARTIST STATEMENT.

Colleen Kelly Poplin is a documentary filmmaker and sound artist. Her work explores gender roles and inequality, religion and spirituality, family and domestic life, and the inextricable ties that bind these concepts together. Much of her recent documentary work draws from one of her creative obsessions: archival video. The Privileges and Responsibilities of Sisters uses sermons delivered between 1972 to 2014 to examine the perceptions of women held by Mormon religious leaders. Enjoy the Suffering reappropriates local evening news reports and bondage pornography to expose American rape culture and its effect on female sexuality. Her most recent project follows her journey out of the Mormon church—a journey unexpectedly aligned with her first pregnancy. The piece examines the emotional and spiritual weight of leaving Mormonism and its effect on both the family she was born into and the family she is creating.
 
Colleen has studied sound design, documentary production, and feminist media theory throughout her life. She earned MA and MFA degrees in Media Art from Emerson College and a Bachelor of Science degree in Radio-Television-Film from The University of Texas at Austin. She currently resides in Boston with her husband and baby girl.

colleenita [@] gmail [dot] com

Around age eight, I started using my Fisher Price tape deck to create radio shows that discussed the issues of the day—pressing matters like what I had for dinner and who I had a crush on (Salvador Mendez). A handful of years later, I upgraded my work by sneaking into my mother’s closet to steal her VHS camcorder. Though the highlights of that particular stage can be reduced to angsty music videos and a revisioning of Titanic starring Barbie and Ken, it was clear by age fourteen that I gravitated toward sound and video production in an attempt to make sense of my young life. Though the subject matter I explore has evolved a bit since then, my artistic motivation remains the same—making sense of life.

My creative work typically originates in observation and research. I encounter something in the world that doesn’t make sense to me. (Rampant sexism. Spiritual hypocrisy. Resistance to positive change in the name of “tradition.” I could go on.) I watch the phenomenon for a while; try to get inside it. Then I read everything that has ever been written about it since the dawn of time. Truth be told, I obsess over it. All that research and rumination ultimately comes together in a sound or video piece I’ve created in an attempt to understand it all. Sometimes I’ve arrived at a solid conclusion. Sometimes I haven’t. An early example of this process is Sealed, an autobiographical radio documentary conceived to emotionally investigate my parents’ divorce. After nearly twenty years of observing the aftermath in my own life, I read book after book on the effects of parental divorce on children. I spent hours talking with my three siblings; tentatively asked questions of my parents. The final result was a 22-minute piece recounting six experiences—none of which were the same.

Repeatedly going through this pattern of observe-research-obsess-respond has taught me one thing—I am an authority on nothing but my own experience. Because of that, my work centers on autobiographical and essay documentary. I use the lens of my personal experience to observe the world around me and the often complex interpersonal dynamics that comprise it. I artistically reflect on relationships of all kinds in hopes of improving upon them—creating work that fosters empathy and understanding; illuminating the aspects of humanity that require attention.

I make art to change people, and I make art to change myself.