Merritt Johnson was born in West Baltimore and spent her childhood navigating between trees, tarps, concrete and culture. She earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. A multidisciplinary artist, Johnson exhibits, performs, speaks and writes independently and collaboratively. For nearly two decades her work has navigated spaces between bodies and the body politic, between land and culture rooted in and dependent on Anowarakowa Kawennote (Turtle Island). Johnson makes reflectors and refractors; vision shifters to look at (and through) puddles of blood and oil, plastic tarps, chain link fences, cloud cover, tree lines, clear cuts, bone, skin and hair.
She has seen and felt the effects of the tongues, knives and pens that cut apart land, culture, sex, and bodies; responding in creation of works that build connection and vision. Her works expose the ways cultural blindness and deafness to connection breed fear and violence. She sews, casts, weaves, draws, beads, paints, carves, performs, films, and projects into and out of how we are. Johnson’s works are containers for story, feeling and thought: images of what cannot be seen, exercises for existence, and political bodies. Her work casts light and shadow on how and who we are, on how and who we could be.
contact: merrittejohnson@gmail.com
Selected Exhibitions and Performances
2018 Exorcising America
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
Salt Lake City, UT
2018 With no Memories, No Ties, No Phantoms to Tend For
Wave Pool Gallery
Cincinnati OH
2017 Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly
Bemis Center for Contemporary Art
Omaha NE
2017 Converge
Reed College
Winter Count ans R.I.S.E
Postland OR
2017 Broad Stripes and Bright Stars
Ely Center for Contemporary Art
New Haven, CT
2017 AIM Biennial
Bronx Museum
New York, New York
2017 Waterline Exhibition
Center for Visual Art, Denver CO
2017 American Domain
Museum of Capitalism, LA
Winter Count Collective
2017 Radiator Gallery
Winter Count Collective
2017 Connective Tissue
Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Santa Fe NM
2017 Broken Boxes
form & concept, Santa Fe NM
2017 Third Space /shifting conversations about contemporary art
Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham Alabama
2017 This is a Creation Story
solo exhibition including collaborative works with Nicholas Galanin,
Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ginger Dunill, Dylan McLaughlin
Conley Gallery, CalState Fresno
2016 Hercules Projects
New York, New York
2015 Screening of Exorcizing America: How to Shake Hands with Water
Acting Out: Performance Symposium
Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Santa Fe NM
2016 Artist in the Marketplace Residency
Bronx Museum of Art NY,NY
2015 Acting Out: Contemporary Native Performance Art
MoCNA, Santa Fe NM
2015 Custom Made
Kamloops Art Gallery
Kamloops, British Columbia CA
2014 Symposium international d’art-nature
Les Jardins du Précambrien, Val David Quebec CA
Collaborations with Nicholas Galanin
2014 Storytelling Aboriginal Biennial
Ontario College of Art, Ottawa, Ontario CA
2014 Cross Currents
Fort Lewis College
Durango, CO
2014 Aboriginal Bienniale: Storytelling
Art Mur, Montreal , Quebec CA
2013- 2014
Cross Currents
Metropolitan State University of Denver, Center for Visual Art
Denver CO
2013 Balancing Act: a performance in four parts
Anita’s Way, 42nd Street NY, NY
Presented by Chashama
2013 Stands With A Fist: Contemporary Native Women Artists
Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Santa Fe NM
2013 Re-Place
Solo Exhibition and performance
The Foundry for Art Design + Culture, Cohoes NY
2012 Concealed Geographies
A Space Gallery and ImagineNative Film & Media Festival, Toronto Canada
2012 Talking Stick Festival Exhibition
Roundhouse Gallery, Vancouver BC
2011 Animal Influence
Interactive Futures Exhibition
Main Gallery Emily Carr University, Vancouver BC
Salish Seas*
Exhibition and publication (Talon Books)
Gallery Gachet, Vancouver BC
2010 Sky Dome (props, patches, rips, and tears)
Solo exhibition, Grunt Gallery, Vancouver, BC
It’s Complicated: Art about Home
Exhibition and performance
Evergreen Gallery, Evergreen College, Olympia, WA
2009 Double Self Double
MacKenzie Gallery, Regina, Saskatchewan
Collaborative Performance with Maria Hupfield
2008 Sneak and Lock-pick
Performance
Presented by Vancouver Live Biennale Performance Society
& the Aboriginal Curatorial Collective
Intersections Digital Studios, ECUAD, Vancouver, British Colombia
2008 Museum Quality
Denver Art Museum, Denver CO, United States,
Museum of Anthropology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Colombia
Collaborative Performances with Maria Hupfield
2007 Baby George Washington carried across the river by an Indian skin boat
Installation, White River, Batesville AR
2005 Some Sort of Uncertainty
Patricia Doran Gallery
Boston MA
2005 MFA Thesis Exhibition
Bakalar Gallery
Massachusetts College of Art
Boston MA
2004 The Ocean is Never Sad (drawings and sculpture)
solo exhibition, Patricia Doran Gallery, Boston MA
2003 Earthworms Uprooted, they were once in the mud
In collaboration with William Earl Kofmehl III
Sculpture on the Trail: Farmington Canal Trail, Artspace 6
New Haven CT
Selected Activity & Publications
2016 NEA Magazine 2016 Issue 2
Outside the Box
2016 NEA Artworks Blog
Art Talk, July 28 2016
https://www.arts.gov/art-works/2016/art-talk-merritt-johnson
2015 11 Native Artists Redefining What it Means to be Native American
Mic.com
2015 Panel Reviewer SEDS Grants
Administration for Native Americans, Washington DC
2014 Broken Boxes Podcast Episode24
http://www.brokenboxespodcast.com/
2014 First American Art
No. 4 Fall 2014
2014 PBS News Hour, Rocky Mountain PBS
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/art/im-contemporary-im-native-american-im-artist/
2014 Social Engagement Residency
Museum of Contemporary Native Art
Santa Fe NM
2011 This Was Never a Knife Fight
Artist talk presented at Interactive Futures New Media Conference, Vancouver BC
Published in Antennae: The Journal of Visual Culture Issue 22 Autumn 2012
http://www.antennae.org.uk/back-issues-2012/4583477699
2011 The Inherently Political Action of Being Indigenous (unapologetically and mixed)
Presenter, Panelist
CAA 2011 Conference, session “Potentialities of Performance” NY, NY
2010 Adjudicator, Haida Museum
Skidegate, Haida Gwaii, BC
2009 Adjudicator, Vancouver Olympics Aboriginal Arts Commission
VANOC, Vancouver, BC
Mark My Words: Native Women Mapping Our Nations (Cover image)
by Mishuana Goeman, University of Michigan Press
Formations of United States Colonialism (cover Image)
Duke University Press, Edited by Alyosha Goldstein
I’m thrilled and totally absorbed in seeing this work and the artist you’ve become, Merritt. Your work is astounding.