Andrea Carlson

Through a practice that combines lived experience with intergenerational oral history and storytelling, archival research, art and film history and theory, Andrea Carlson creates incisive works of resistance and sovereignty that disempower colonial histories and practices of erasure. 

Carlson’s forthcoming solo exhibitions include at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago (2024) and the Denver Art Museum (2025). Among her group exhibitions in 2023 were Scientia Sexualis, Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, The Land Carries Our Ancestors, National Gallery of Art, Washington DC, Inheritance, Whitney Museum of American Art, NYC, and the Chicago Architecture Biennale. Her recent public art commissions include You are on Potawatomi Land, Chicago Riverwalk (2021–2023), and RED EXIT, Whitney Museum of American Art with TF Cornerstone and High Line Art (2021). In 2020, Carlson co-founded the Center for Native Futures in Chicago.

Carlson has been awarded numerous grants and fellowships including Creative Capital (2023), United States Artist Visual Art Fellowship (2022), Chicago Artadia Award (2021), and Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2017). Her work is collected by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the British Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis Institute of Art, among many other institutions.

Andrea Carlson (b. 1979) is a visual artist who maintains a studio practice in northern Minnesota and Chicago, Illinois. She received her BA in American Indian Studies and Studio Arts from the University of Minnesota (2003), and her MFA in Visual Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (2005). 

www.mikinaak.com

The Indifference of Fire, 2023
oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper
approximately 46 x 182 inches (overall), 11.5 x 30 inches (each of 24 elements)
Gochman Family Collection
The Indifference of Fire, 2023 (detail)
L’Assomption Sash for Carrying Things that No Longer Exist #7, 2023
gouache on paper
30 x 22.5 inches (paper size)
photo by Phillip Maisel, private collection
L’Assomption Sash for Carrying Things that No Longer Exist #8, 2023
gouache on paper
30 x 22.5 inches (paper size)
photo by Phillip Maisel, private collection
Never-Ending Monument (foreground), 2022, and Cast a Shadow (background), 2021, as installed at the Toronto Biennial of Art (March 26–June 5, 2022)
co-commissioned by the Toronto Biennial of Art and FRONT International Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art
photo by Toni Hafkenscheid, Forge Project Collection, traditional lands of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck
Cast a Shadow, 2021
oil, acrylic, gouache, ink, color pencil, and graphite on paper
46 x 182 inches (overall), 11.5 x 30 inches (each of 24 elements)
Forge Project Collection, traditional lands of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck
Red Exit, 2020
oil, watercolor, opaque watercolor, ink, acrylic, colored pencil, ball-point pen, fiber-tipped pen, and graphite pencil on paper
115 x 183 inches (overall), 11.5 x 30 inches (each of 60 elements)
Collection Whitney Museum of American Art
Red Exit, 2020, as installed across from the Whitney Museum of American Art
billboard
Exit, 2019
33.5 x 47.75 inches screenprint
edition of 20 printed at Highpoint Editions
Anti-Retro, 2018
33.5 x 47.75 inches screenprint
edition of 20 printed at Highpoint Editions