Allison Schulnik uses painting, ceramics, and, traditional animation to choreograph compositions that embody a spirit of the macabre and a tragicomic perspective on love, death, and farce.

Schulnik’s animated film MOTH (2019), presented as the Midnight Moment for January 2020, ushers in the new year with symbols of birth, renewal and change. A hand-painted moth flutters in stop-motion, transforming from a fully-formed insect, to a nascent cocoon, to fantastical, sometimes ominous creatures. Schulnik began this work after a moth hit her studio window, painting frames for the film almost daily for 14 months as she was pregnant with and gave birth to her first child. The work reflects on the cycles of life and the bodily and emotional metamorphosis of motherhood.

MOTH is presented in partnership with MASS MoCA on the occasion of its group exhibition Suffering From Realness, curated by Denise Markonish, which is on view through January 2020 and features the original, full-length version of the work.