Diana Baumbach

Diana Baumbach is an artist, educator, and curator originally from Oak Park, IL (USA). Baumbach earned her BFA from Washington University in St. Louis (2003) and her MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale (2007), with a Certification in Teaching and Learning from the University of Wyoming (2021). She has had recent solo exhibitions at Boise State University, University of South Carolina, Colorado State University, Arte Mare (Finland) and Naropa University.

Baumbach’s work has been honored by two Visual Art Fellowships from the Wyoming Arts Council (2015, 2021). In 2022, she spent a year in Finland where she was an artist in residence at Stundars Museum and Novia University. She has undertaken other artist residencies in Spain, Italy, and the Netherlands.

In her artwork, Baumbach embraces the histories embedded within fibers, and uses them to communicate through a material language. She mines materials from her lived experience including her shed hair, soiled clothing, worn nursing pads, and soiled Onesies, among others. These materials cast an array of associations ranging from caretaking to the erotic, all relating back to the body. By working with fibers, Baumbach uses touch – and in turn, pleasure – as a research method that leads to embodied knowledge. She wears and performs in her textile-based objects, which she documents in photographs. Her photographs situate her own body as the primary subject, creating a dialogue between herself, the materials, and the viewer.