Donigan Cumming

Known for: Directing

Born: July 4, 1947 in Danville, Virginia, USA

Donigan Cumming is an artist based in Montréal, Canada. He addresses themes of the body, taboos of representation, social engagement,and photographic truth. He uses photography, text, sound, video, collage, animation, drawing,and painting in artworks, installations, projections, and books. Cumming locates his work in a created community formed over many projects and sustained over decades. These close relationships have allowed him to explore the social and ethical implications of the observational image characterized by an ongoing analysis of the reality effects of documentary film and photography, and the realities of the subjects they depict and describe. The results are marked by an interest in the threshold between the public “onstage” and the private “backstage”—the psycho-social performances of all the actors, including himself, as maker.