Cindy O'Dell
Professor of Art
Cindy O’Dell, Professor of Art in Photography and Video and Digital Imaging, creates challenging feminist art in many media. She has been teaching at DePauw since 1998, is a former chair of the Art Department and is the recipient of a DePauw Fisher Fellowship and University Professorship.
O’Dell’s work examines notions of identity in relation to gender, self, memory, place, loss and dislocation. Coming from the documentary tradition her practice embodies activism, seeking to incite change or, at the very least, create awareness. Through her experimental documentary photographic work, she hopes to find beauty in the midst of human struggle. “Common Threads,” her MFA Thesis in 1998 from the University of Colorado at Boulder was exhibited nationally; it consists of photographic quilts portraying the lives and stories of women and their families living with breast cancer. Her film “Residue of Memory,” a family memoir, traced five generations of women exploring the metaphorical relationship between family loss and an abandoned rock quarry. It won Best Experimental Documentary at the New York International Independent Film and Video Festival in 2003. Work from a series titled, [UN]Natural was chosen for the juried exhibition at the Indiana State Museum titled, *Whispers to shouts: Indiana Women Who Create Art* and was also exhibited at the Woman Made gallery in Chicago. "[UN]Natural" explored issues of genetic engineering and personal representation, asking viewers to question their own fragility and identity in the midst of scientific, corporate-driven technological change. O’Dell was an artist in residence at the Burren College of Art in Western Ireland in 2005 where she created “Migrations,” about the desire to find hope in the midst of dislocation, isolation and disrupted familial memory. "Migrations" was exhibited at the Indiana State Museum in 2009.