Merritt Johnson was born in West Baltimore and spent her childhood navigating between trees, tarps, concrete and culture. Johnson’s work is rooted in her experience as a cis-gender pansexual woman of (non-status) Mohawk and Settler descent. From this perspective, her work asserts agency for mixed bodies, and allegiance with land and water. Johnson exhibits, performs, speaks and writes independently and collaboratively.
Johnson earned her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art. For two decades her work has navigated spaces between bodies and the body politic, land and culture rooted in and dependent on Anowarakowa Kawennote / Turtle Island. She has seen and felt the effects of the tongues, knives and pens that cut apart land, culture, sex, and bodies. She creates work that celebrates connection and builds vision using mixed materials and processes that reflect her mixed heritage: sewing, casting, weaving, drawing, beading, painting, carving, performance, and film. Her works are containers for story, feeling and thought and exercises for existence. Johnson’s work casts light and throws shadow on how and who we are, and on how and who we could be.
Johnson’s work is in many private collections and as well as public collections including The Birmingham Museum of Art, Birmingham, AL and The Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM.
contact: merrittejohnson@gmail.com
Selected Exhibitions and Performances
2019 Survivance and Sovereignty on Turtle Island: Engaging with Contemporary Native American Art
Kupferberg Holocaust Center, Queensborough Community College NY
2019 Galleri Nord Norge/The Gallery of Northern Norway
Harstad Norway
2019 Monarchs: Indigenous and Brown Artists in the Path of the Butterfly
Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, KS
2018 The Future of Craft, Part 2
Museum of Art and Design NY, NY
2018 Monarchs: Native and Brown Artists in the Path of the Butterfly
Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami, Miami FL
2018 Making Change:The Art and Craft of Activism
Museum of Design Atlanta, Atlanta GA
2018 The Condor and the Eagle: Moving Forward after Standing Rock
Elisabeth Jones Art Center, Portland, OR
2018 Woven Work from Near Here
Grunt Gallery, Vancouver, BC Canada
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 and R.I.S.E collaboration
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.