About Me
I am a documentary filmmaker, multimedia artist and trained attorney, based in Washington, DC. As the founder and creative director of social impact production company Unchained Stories, I am deeply committed to collaborative media-making and storytelling that advocates for a more just world by centering the voices of currently and formerly incarcerated people and communities impacted by systemic injustice.
As a filmmaker, multimedia artist, educator and advocate, I believe visual stories are the most powerful tools we have to encourage dialogue, promote connection and compassion, and inspire social change. I am committed to art- and media-making that creates pathways to inner and out transformation through self-reflection, personal and community healing and restorative justice. We are living at a transformational moment. The way we will dismantle systems of oppression is through art and stories that reimagine a different world. I continue to deepen my work and collaborations towards this vision for a radical way of healing and safety within ourselves and in our communities, justice built on love rather than retribution.
In my personal practice, I explore photographs and moving images as poems, written in a unique visual language that is both the way I make meaning of the world within and the way I engage with it externally. My work uses photography, film, and found media to build poetic narratives that are intimate and emotional. I developed the technique of weaving photographs out of an exploration of double-exposure photography as a way to explore layers of myself, my own experience and the world around me.
As an educator, I have shared photography and multimedia tools with youth in Washington, DC, and Jacmel, Haiti, with undergraduate students at George Mason University and Montgomery College, with incarcerated students within the DC Department of Corrections, with system-impacted creatives in partnership with the Justice Arts Coalition and with attorneys, advocates and changemakers through JUSTstories.
I am available to collaborate on multimedia storytelling projects in the DC area and around the globe.
CONTACT
Email: kristin@kristinadair.com
Phone: 202.213.2070
Current Location: Washington, D.C.
AWARDS/GRANTS/FELLOWSHIPS
Humanities DC, Project grant, Neighborhood Power (2023)
DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Public Art Building Communities grant (2023)
Art For Justice Fund, Project Grant, JUSTstories Film Program, Justice Arts Coalition (2022)
Public Welfare Foundation, Project Grant, REPOWERED Film (2021)
DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, Artist Fellowship (2020-2024)
Echoing Green, Black Male Achievement Fellow (2019-2021)
Open Society Foundations, Project Grant (2019-2020)
Halcyon Arts Lab, Inaugural Fellow (2017-2018)
DC Office of Cable Television, Film, Music & Entertainment (OCTFME), Filmmaker of the Month Award (November 2018)
HumanitiesDC, DC Oral History Collaborative Grant (2018)
DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Film Project Grant (2018)
SELECTED EXHIBITIONS/SCREENINGS
Neighborhood Power, Public art installation and screening series (2023)
All Souls Unitarian, "Neighborhood Justice" preview screening (2023)
IA&A at Hillyer Gallery, solo exhibition, "Unconditional" (2022)
TEDx Foggy Bottom, partner, produced virtual storytelling event (2020)
Washington Project for the Arts, Annual Benefit Auction (2020, 2023)
By The People x Monochrome Collective, Virtual Art Fair (2020)
Washington Project for the Arts, Annual Juried Auction (2019)
National Endowment for the Arts, Artist Talk (2019)
By the People Festival at Smithsonian Arts & Industries, Artist Talk (2019)
Night of Ideas Festival, #LifeTo16 Performance and Installation, Washington, DC (2019)
Busboys and Poets, A.C.T.O.R (A Continuing Talk on Race) Series, Screening and Panel (2018)
Georgetown University Law Center, Becoming Free Screening and Panel (2018)
Busboys and Poets, Stories from the WIRE, Screening and Panel (2018)
By the People Festival, “Cell 17” Multimedia Installation (2018)