AN EVENING WITH LILLI CARRÉ

Thursday, October 22, 6:00 p.m. | In the unruly, shape-shifting films of animator, comics artist, and sculptor Lilli Carré (BFA 2006), bodies, lines, and even space refuse to stay put. Drawing on the elastic traditions of cartooning and experimental abstraction, her rebellious figures ignore commands, return the viewer’s gaze, leak into their surroundings, and disappear into murky swamps. Carré presents works from across her career, from Jill (2016), whose gawky computer-animated double—modeled on Carré herself—resists her maker’s commands, to the hand-painted Glazing (2021), in which a woman twists through poses borrowed from art history before shaking off the fantasies they impose. The program concludes with her latest works—the multiple award-winning Evacuations (2025), where painted smears haunt photocopied images of emptied public spaces, and the Chicago premiere of 5000 Years of Counting Sheep (2026). Witty, seductive, and more than a little ominous, Carré’s works revel in the freedom and danger of instability.

PROGRAM

Glazing
2021, 2.5 min.
An animated woman’s body shifts constantly in “smear” frames, stretched and abstracted between fixed forms. She briefly inhabits poses borrowed from art history, then discards them, rejecting the fantasies they represent.

Private Properties
2019, 3.5 min.
A forensic study of private space through a computer’s eye. Architecture perpetually collapses and rebuilds in a meditation on instability and the ownership of one’s environment, possessions, and body.

Crux Film
Lilli Carré and Alexander Stewart, 2013, 5 min.
Award: First Prize, 2014 Punto y Raya Festival
Precarious and fluid arrangements constantly interrupt one another.

Jill
2016, 7 min.
Award: Best U.S. Short, 2017 GLAS Animation Festival
A rebellious cartoon body modeled on Carré is commanded by the artist’s own voice. Drawing on the story of Frankenstein and the vaudeville origins of Gertie the Dinosaur, the film probes power, obedience, and the uneasy relationship between creator and creation.

Hand Catching Banana
2016, 2 min.
A slapstick retort to Richard Serra’s 1968 film Hand Catching Lead.

The Negotiation
2013, 6 min.
Originally a two-channel installation, two animated loops continually phase and realign—an irresolvable dialogue between constantly shifting forms.

Huskies
2018, 7 min.
Language drawn from politics and the news transformed into the audio for water-aerobics instruction. 

Tap Water
2017, 4.5 min.
Everything leaks at least a little. A tactility poem.

Stone Fruit
2022, 2 min.
A hand-drawn animation made straight ahead, inviting improvisation and the unconscious into the process as it grows. Made while ruminating on the body and germination.

5000 Years of Counting Sheep
2026, 3.5 min.
A sleepless rumination linking ancient clay records of sheep with CGI vectors—exploring written language, mark-making technologies, and 5,000 years of insomnia.

Evacuations
2025, 7 min.
Awards: Chris Frayne Award for Best Animated Film, 2026 Ann Arbor Film Festival; Craft Award for Best Sound Design, 2025 Ottawa International Animation Festival; Special Jury Award for Short Film, 2025 New Chitose Airport International Animation Festival
Painted formless figures haunt photographs of emptied-out public spaces, their repetitive smear-frame movements channeling the frantic energy of the present. Figures become displaced as environments dissolve and their printed record evaporates.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Lilli Carré is an interdisciplinary artist working across experimental animation, comics, drawing, print, and ceramic sculpture. Her films have screened internationally at Sundance, Rotterdam, Annecy, Ottawa, 25FPS, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the Ann Arbor Film Festival. She is a 2024 Guggenheim Fellow in Film-Video and cofounder of the Eyeworks Experimental Animation Screening Series, which has presented programs in Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York since 2010. Carré has published several graphic novels with Fantagraphics, and her work has appeared in The New Yorker, Best American Comics, and Best American Nonrequired Reading. Her work has been supported by residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and is held in the collections of the National Gallery of Art, Library of Congress, and Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Thomas J. Watson Library. Carré received her bachelor of fine arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 and her master of fine arts from Northwestern University in 2016. She is represented by Western Exhibitions and lives in Los Angeles, where she teaches in CalArts’ Experimental Animation program.

ACCESSIBILITY

All CATE events include real-time captioning (CART). The Siskel Film Center is ADA accessible. Its theaters are equipped with hearing loops. For more accessibility information or to request additional accommodations, visit saic.edu/access or email cate@saic.edu.

TICKETS

$14 General public
$9 Students & seniors
$8 Film Center members
$8 SAIC staff & faculty & AIC staff
FREE for SAIC students with a valid ID

All CATE programs are free for SAIC students. Unless otherwise noted, SAIC student tickets are released five days prior to showtime. Tickets must be picked up in person from the Gene Siskel Film Center box office. A student ID is required.

CONVERSATIONS AT THE EDGE

For 25 years, the Siskel Film Center’s award-winning Conversations at the Edge series has welcomed landmark and emerging artists to Chicago for adventurous screenings, performances, and conversation. Bringing together an extraordinary breadth of forms, traditions, and histories, CATE explores—and expands—our sense of what moving images can do. CATE is made possible through the Siskel Film Center’s ongoing collaboration with SAIC’s Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation. The series is organized by Amy Beste, director of public programs at SAIC.