vanessa german
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Biography
Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1976
Lives & Works in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina -
"Emotionally poignant, clever, and insightful. german continues to peel away what we come to expect from art to reveal new depths of meaning that can be unexpected."
—Hrag Vartanian, Hyperallergic -
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german’s artistic practice is intertwined with and inextricable from her dedicated role in activism and community leadership. In 2011, german founded the Love Front Porch, an arts initiative for the women, children, and families of the local neighborhood that began after she moved her studio practice onto the front steps of her home. Three years later, in 2014, german opened the ARThouse, which combines a community studio, a large garden, an outdoor theatre, and an artist residency.
Upholding artmaking as an act of restorative justice, german confronts and begins to dismantle the emotional and spiritual weight imposed by 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.
In 2022, german was awarded the Heinz Award for the Arts. Other awards include the Don Tyson Prize from the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the United States Artist Grant in 2018, the Jacob Lawrence Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2017, and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Grant in 2015. -
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Works
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Exhibitions
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vanessa german: Sad Rapper
September 8 – October 22, 2022 509 West 27th Street, New YorkConceived as a fantastical group portrait of figures from a single neighborhood, the exhibition draws on german’s youth in Los Angeles in the 1980s to expose the complex narratives that both represent and shape Black life and culture in the context of the American dream.View More
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Between the Earth and Sky
January 21 – February 27, 2021 509 West 27th Street, New York -
SEED
June 21 – August 17, 2018This exhibition, curated by Yvonne Force, brings together a group of contemporary artists who explore the complexity and resonance of a long association between the natural world, sexuality and fertility, and spirituality and mysticism. Force’s understanding of the artistic practice as akin to witchcraft—resonant with ideas of creation in both the divine and horticultural senses—informs the curation of works that span landscape, figuration, symbolism and abstraction.View More
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Select Fairs
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vanessa german at Frieze Los Angeles
February 29 – March 3, 2024Kasmin is pleased to debut a new series of sculpture by American artist vanessa german. This focused presentation will be the first to spotlight german’s developing use of rose quartz as a primary medium in her sculptural practice. -
Independent New York
vanessa german in 15x15: Independent 2010–2024 May 9 – 12, 2024 -
vanessa german
Art Basel OVR: Portals June 13 – August 13, 2020This presentation of work by german for Art Basel OVR: Portals coincided with an announcement that the artist has joined the programme at Kasmin. Online from June 16-19, the works were also exhibited at the gallery’s High Line Nine space (509 West 27th Street) by appointment from June 15 to August 13. This inaugural edition of Art Basel’s Portals platform focuses on artistic practices that interrogate the parameters that have shaped our contemporary condition, both through current and historical lenses. -
Independent New York 2022
May 5 – 8, 2022
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News
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vanessa german featured in The New York Times
by Aruna D’Souza August 10, 2024 View More -
vanessa german interviewed in Colossal
by Grace Ebert July 2, 2024 View More -
vanessa german on Good Morning America
May 21, 2024 View More -
vanessa german profiled in Artnet News
by Annikka Olsen February 28, 2024 View More -
vanessa german awarded the Joyce Foundation Fellowship
January 1, 2024 View More -
vanessa german interviewed in The Slowdown
by Spencer Bailey August 17, 2023 View More -
vanessa german in Conversation at the National Gallery of Art
March 6, 2023 View More -
vanessa german Receives Heinz Award for the Arts
September 22, 2022 View More -
vanessa german featured in Cultured Magazine
by Camille Bacon May 2, 2022The spiritual force of artist vanessa german’s “Power Figures” refuses to be articulated. Ahead of german’s solo New York presentation with Kasmin, Camille Bacon takes...View More -
vanessa german Joins Kasmin
June 10, 2021 View More
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Video
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