Donna Bassin is a photo-based artist, filmmaker, psychologist, professor, and author whose work confronts the fractures of contemporary life. Born in Brooklyn and now rooted in New Jersey, she creates long-term projects that listen closely to trauma and resilience—bearing witness to the aftershocks of war, racism, and social injustice, and more recently, to the wounds we inflict on our environment. Through her lens, what is broken is named, and what endures is given space to be seen.

ARTIST STATEMENT

Dollhouse: No Shelter

“A fractured dollhouse, held together with coated wire and surrounded by burnt trees and scorched furniture, creates a fragile outline of safety. A solitary miniature figure—cloaked in black and holding a small plant beside her luggage—stands as a witness to collapse and a keeper of potential renewal. Both artifact and warning, the structure reflects the unraveling of home as a personal refuge, civic protection, and planetary stability in an era of climate catastrophe and political fracture. Through damaged yet enduring, the work asks: what forms of literal and symbolic shelter can we salvage in a world when even safety has become precarious?”