autumn ahn
exhibitions
artworks
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Autumn Ahn is an interdisciplinary artist whose work interweaves the notion of landscape with the unknown and the lived experience. Reflecting upon scales of experience, bodily relation to the earth’s forces, and movement in the broadest sense, she explores the responsive conditions that shape reality in human perception. Originally studying painting, she works instinctively with line, ink, paper, color, and space to engage with the environment or to speak to the paradoxes between physical dimensions of presence and the demands made by lingering or non-linear psychogeographies upon material life. Her expanded work includes the use of natural forces and installation relating to conceptual and body-centered principles found in Western and non-Western art histories of drawing, avant-garde action, performance and experimental gestures. Engaging with the contradictions, immediacies, and transcendent possibilities of an unfixed state of being, Ahn’s practice contemplates the range of how form itself stabilizes knowledge and therefore life.
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Ahn holds an MFA in performance and critical studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a BFA in painting from Boston University and Scuola Internazionale di Grafica. She is the recipient of grants from the Rauschenberg Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Puffin Foundation, and a 2025 CAA Professional Development Award for Visual Art. She has been in residence at Headlands Center for the Arts, Cittadellarte, the Studios at MassMoCA, and also many informal community supported residencies. Ahn was most recently a visiting artist at Bard College and a visiting fellow in Philosophy at Harvard University. In 2023 she was awarded a Arts, Science + Collaboration Initiative award to conduct research between the Yerkes Observatory and the University of Chicago. Her work has been exhibited widely, including Selebe Yoon Gallery, Dakar; Cinema Tonalá, Bogotá; False Flag Gallery, New York; Anthony Greaney Gallery, Boston; The Chimney, New York; Sky High Farm Biennial, Germantown; Cinema Tonalá, Bogotá; Le Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain (CNAC), Grenoble; AIDS Action Committee; among others. Her work has been featured by ARTE (FR/DE), the Emergency Index, and Boston Art Review.
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b.1986 (Philadelphia)
Lives and works in Western MA, USA
Education
2021-2023
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, MFA
2004-2008
Boston University, College of Fine Arts, BFA
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice, IT
Selected Solo Exhibitions
2025 no sun, Anthony Greaney Gallery, Boston, MA
2024 on the genealogy of forms, Lower Cavity, Holyoke, MA
2019 surfaces, Howard Yezerski Gallery, Boston, MA
2017 a tall action is not a height, The Chimney, Brooklyn, NY
2015 Latent Lavender, Ryan Lee Gallery, Special Projects, NYC
2014 Voy(age)ur, STREAM Gallery, Brooklyn, NYC
2014 Untitled (Chamber), AIDS ACTION COMMITTEE & Alter Projects, Miami, FL
Selected Group Exhibitions
2025 Trees Never End and Houses Never End, Sky High Farm Biennial, Germantown, NY
2025 The Summit Show, Mundus Press, Holyoke, MA
2024 Convocatoria, Salon Acmé, CDMX, Mexico
2022 Like a child or I go on the playground swings when no one’s around or giggle is such an embodied word (For Eloise Greenfield), NADA
2021 Boomshakalaka, False Flag Gallery, NYC, NY
2021 Mots de neige, Histoires en sable, Selebe Yoon Gallery, Dakar, Senegal
2018 Crowley Theater, Marfa, TX
2017 CASTLEDRONE CORRAL, Boston City Hall, Government Center, MA
2017 Space Debris & Exhibist Magazine for 15th Istanbul Biennial, a good neighbor, Surp Yerrotutyun Ereni Kilisesi, Istanbul, TR
2016 Galerie 0fr., 20th Anniversary Salon Exhibition, Paris, FR
2016 The Host, Cinema Tonalá, Bogotá Art Fair, CO
2015 Take You There Radio, Streaming Radio Intervention, Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble, FR
2013 SEVEN, an exhibition on drawing, Montserrat Art Galleries, Boston, MA
2013 KSAT, Maison du Portugal, Paris, FR
2011 Chain Letter Show, Sampson Projects, Boston, MA
2008 Arches Print Show Biennial, 808 Gallery, Boston, MA
ArtAwards & Residencies
2026
Foundation for Contemporary Art, Emergency Grant, NYC, NY
2025
CAA Professional Development Award for Visual Art
Martha Boschen Porter Fund
2024
Massachusetts Cultural Council Grants for Creative Individuals
2023
Municipal Art League Fellowship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2022
Headlands Arts Center, Residency
2021
New Artists Society Award, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Full Tuition Merit Scholarship
2019
Wesleyan University, ICPP mini-intensive
Createwell Artist Grant
2018
Harvard University Department of Philosophy, Visiting Fellow
The Studios at MassMoCA, Artist in Residence
2008
Pilchuck Glass School, Einar & Jamex de la Torres