Sophie Chahinian

The founding producer and director of The Artist Profile Archive, Sophie Chahinian, a Los Angeles native, earned a B.A. in Philosophy from Occidental College. She became involved with independent film production as both a producer and actor before she began working for Light and Space artist Eric Orr in the late 1990s. In her capacity as his studio manager, she interacted with many other Southern California artists such as Ed Moses, Larry Bell, and Robert Irwin. Wanting a more formal education in the field, she moved to England and earned an M.A. in Contemporary Art from the University of Manchester through Sotheby’s Institute of Art London.

During her studies she read many insightful, academic texts, prompting her to reflect upon her own experience of listening to artists in their own voices, providing an incomparable personal perspective. It was then that she decided to start The Artist Profile Archive as a platform for primary information, allowing artists the opportunity to talk about their own work, in their own words. Her film experience and her formal education in contemporary art proved an effective combination for interviewing artists in their own environments, talking extemporaneously about their work, from which she creates intimate video portraits made up exclusively of the artist speaking and footage of the artist’s work.

Sophie’s hope is that by sharing these films of working artists discussing their personal backgrounds, creative challenges, sources of inspiration and artistic practices, more people will become engaged with contemporary art and realize its capacity to unite people by identifying the commonality of the human experience.