Dicky Bahto lives in Los Angeles. He has exhibited work utilizing still and motion picture photography, sound, and performance at a variety of museums, galleries, microcinemas, film festivals, conferences, alternative spaces, and scenic locations spanning the Northern Hemisphere, from the Museum of Modern Art and the Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles to Life Changing Ministries (a former church in West Oakland) and a series of nooks, crannies, and underbrush along and under Sunset Blvd. He’s received commissions from The Getty Museum, Monday Evening Concerts, and The Huntington, and grants from the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Visual Arts and bar-fund LA.

His interest in music has led him to both collaborate with composers and musicians, both as a performer and as a visual artist. This includes a performance trio with Corey Fogel and Tashi Wada, on-going duos for projected images and instruments with Luciano Chessa, a series of open-ended performances incorporating sounds, images, and objects with Julia Holter and Mark So, and the virtual quartet The Ensemble Whose Name is Uhhhhhmm… (Spelled with Five H’s and Two M’s [formerly known as Lil’ Jürg Frey]) with Pluto Bell, Morgan Gerstmar, and Stephanie Cheng Smith, which exists entirely within the video game of Animal Crossings New Horizons. Other musicians he has collaborated with include Casey Anderson, Ashley Bellouin, Sarah Davachi, Carmina Escobar, Liz Harris (performing both as Grouper and as Nivhek), Sepand Shahab, and Laura Steenberge. In addition to creating album art for some of the above musicians, he has made music videos for Julia Holter, Sarah Davachi, Ashley Bellouin & Ben Bracken, Chuck Johnson, Saariselka, Nite Jewel, and Grouper.

He has curated programs of experimental film and video, performance, and music, including a decade of regular programming at the Echo Park Film Center from 2010-2020, as well as programs at REDCAT and the wulf. in Los Angeles, Artist’s Television Access and San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco, Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, UCR ARTS in Riverside, the University of Chicago, MassArt Film Society in Boston, Exploded View in Tuscon, and Yale University in New Haven.

He received a BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004 and an MFA from the University of California, Riverside in 2017, and has himself taught at elementary, middle and high schools around Southern California as well as at the Echo Park Film Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, both The Getty Center and the Getty Villa, Otis College of Art and Design, and the University of California, Riverside. He is currently teaching at the California College of the Arts in San Francisco.