Paige Taul

Paige Taul is an artist, filmmaker, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Film, Video, New Media, and Animation at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work explores Black cultural expression and notions of belonging through lyrical short films that draw on personal history to create meditations on family and folk. She assembles her films from family photographs, interviews, and archival footage to create prismatic portraits of her family while forging abstract connections to kin across time and space.

Taul's research centers on Black identity, family relationships, and cultural expression, with particular focus on the Black middle class, religious identity, and the performance of identity within familial contexts. Her work examines class mobility, respectability politics, and how Black identity intersects with spatial environments. Through direct engagement with historical works like Bill Greaves' Still A Brother: Inside the Negro Middle Class (1968), she navigates temporal gaps in cultural expression between past and present.

Her filmography reveals consistent exploration of intimate Black experiences, using both personal narrative and broader cultural commentary. Taul frequently employs archival materials and interviews to construct narratives that bridge personal and collective memory, creating a multifaceted portrait of contemporary Black life. Her work demonstrates evolving investigation into how Black identity intersects with class, family, religion, and environment.

Taul's work has screened widely at prestigious venues including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Barbican Centre in London, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, and the HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark, as well as film festivals like Media City in Windsor and Onion City in Chicago. Her films have been featured in publications such as Tone Madison, Vocolo Radio, and Film Philosophy.