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Independent New York 2022

Spring Studios, Tribeca, May 5 – 8, 2022

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vanessa german

Kasmin is honored to participate in the 2022 edition of Independent art fair at Spring Studios in Tribeca, New York, from May 5-8 with a solo presentation of 11 new sculptures by vanessa german (b.1976, Milwaukee).

As a self-taught citizen artist, german’s multi-disciplinary practice examines and challenges traditional methods of artistic practice. Through her work, german proposes new models for social healing, utilizing creativity and tenderness as vital forces to reckon with the historical and ongoing catastrophes of structural racism, white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, resource extraction, and misogynoir.
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A visual storyteller, german utilizes assemblage and mixed media, combining locally found objects to build protective ritualistic structures known as power figures or tar babies. Modeled on Congolese Nkisi sculptures and drawing on folk art practices, her work is embellished with materials including beading, glass, fabric, and sculpted wood, and come into existence at the axis on which Black power, spirituality, mysticism and feminism converge.

Upholding artmaking as an act of restorative justice, german confronts and dismantles the emotional and spiritual weight of the multi-generational oppression of African American communities. As a queer Black woman living in the United States, german has described this as a deeply necessary process of adventuring into the wild freedom that the inhabitation of such identities demands. This activist instinct emerges in german’s work to postulate powerful narratives of freedom and love.
About the Artist

vanessa german

Considered inextricable from her identity as an activist, vanessa german’s artistic practice includes sculpture, performance, communal rituals, and immersive installation. With a lineage in indigenous and West African folk practices, as well as the interdisciplinary Black Arts movement of the 1960s, german embraces alternative models for political and spiritual systems that counter those historically structured by racism, capitalism, and patriarchy.

In 2024, german was named the inaugural Joyce Foundation Fellow at the University of Chicago, where she will open a solo exhibition in July this year. She has previously staged solo exhibitions at museums nationwide including The Contemporary Dayton (2023), Montclair Art Museum (2023), Mt. Holyoke College Art Museum (2022-23), and The Frick Pittsburgh (2021), among many others. She has participated in landmark group exhibitions including those at The National Mall, Washington, DC (2023) and Albright-Knox Northland, Buffalo, NY (2022).

german has received numerous awards and accolades over the course of her career, including the Heinz Award for the Arts (2022), a Don Tyson Prize (2018), and a United States Artists grant (2018), among many others. Her work is held by major public institutions including the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO; and the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, CT, among many others.

german has been represented by Kasmin since 2021. Her first solo exhibition at Kasmin, Sad Rapper, was presented in New York in November 2022.

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