autumn ahn
exhibitions
artworks
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info
Autumn Ahn (b. 1986, USA) creates drawing, sculpture and performance from the body’s awareness of forces-in-motion. Using a formal vocabulary including lines, planes, grids, and mark-making, Ahn’s work explores a philosophical inquiry into the conditions of time, engaging with juxtapositions of immensity and vulnerability, stability and open-endedness, image and the body. Through acts of bending, orientation, and other structural changes to her materials, she produces physical and conceptual landscapes that embody an ongoing exchange between Eastern and Western lineages of avant-garde gesture and pictorial thinking.
Recent exhibitions and performances include:
‘line: edge self horizon’ an ongoing series commissed by the estate of Gordon Matta-Clark (2026);
‘no sun’ at Anthony Greaney Gallery, Boston (2025);
‘Horizon (fata morgana)’ in Trees never end and Houses never end, Sky High Farm Biennial, NY (2025);
‘on the genealogy of forms’ at lower_cavity, MA.
Ahn is Korean-American, living and working in Western Massachusets. She holds an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a BFA through combined studies from Boston University’s College of Fine Arts and the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica in Venice, Italy. She was a Visiting Fellow in the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University and a Visiting Artist at Bard College. Ahn was awarded grants from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Rauschenberg Foundation, and the College Art Association; residencies at the Cittadellarte-Pistoletto Foundation, Headlands Center for the Arts, lower_cavity, and the Studios at MASS MoCA. Ahn’s work has been presented and performed internationally at institutions and galleries including Le Magasin – Centre National d’Art Contemporain (CNAC), Grenoble; Selebe Yoon Gallery, Dakar; Cinema Tonalá, Bogotá; The 15th Istanbul Biennial; The Chimney, New York; False Flag Gallery, New York; École Normale Supérieure, Paris; Aalto University, Helsinki. Her work has been featured by AIDS Action Committee, ARTE (FR/DE), Emergency Index, and Boston Art Review.
Current statement of work:
My current work develops from the premise that form produces time. This approach invites an open-ended perspective of the contradictions that exist between physical, psychological, and retinal experiences in the body. Thinking about nature, meaning, and the bodily relation to earth’s forces, I work to intervene and reveal these unfixed conditions of material life. I am exploring how the physical body encounters landscapes, asking what kind of landscapes we are seeing or not seeing. I am thinking about porous boundaries that influence how forms materialize in time and space. Organized by broad questions about reality and movement, my practice processes how the multitudes within each form belong together, across spaces and across time.
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Education
School of the Art Institute of Chicago, MFA
Boston University, College of Fine Arts, BFA
Scuola Internazionale di Grafica, Venice, IT
Scuola Abate Zanetti, Glass School, Murano, IT
Selected Solo
2026 line: edge self horizon, site-specific performance-lectures commissioned by the estate of Gordon Matta-Clark
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
Selected Group
2026 lovers gallery, off-site exhibition, Chinatown, NY / Love in a Fallen City, curated by Qing Yuan Deng and Lily Kwak
2025 Sky High Farm Biennial, Germantown, NY / Trees Never End and Houses Never End, curated by Dan Colen
The Summit Show, Mundus Press, Holyoke, MA / curated by Charlotte Kohlmann
2024 Salon Acmé, CDMX, Mexico / Convocatoria, curated by Ana Castella, Pati Hertling, Anais Lepage, Dario Escobar, Alex Romero, Santiago Villanueva, Benedicta Badia
2022 NADA / 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), curated by Daonne Huff
2021 False Flag Gallery, NYC, NY / Boomshakalaka, curated by Mike Mosby
Selebe Yoon Gallery, Dakar, Senegal / Mots de neige, Histoires en sable, curated by Jennifer Houdrouge
2018 Boston Cyberarts, Art on the Marquee, Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, MA / landscaping, curated by George Fifield
2017 15th Istanbul Biennial, a good neighbor, Surp Yerrotutyun Ereni Kilisesi, Istanbul, TR / Space Debris & Exhibist Magazine
2016 Cinema Tonalá, Feria Internacional de Arte de Bogotá, CO / The Host, curated by Anissa Touati
Montserrat College of Art & Design, Boston, MA / SEVEN, an exhibition on drawing, curated by Maggie Cavallo
2015 Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Grenoble, FR / Take You There Radio, curated by Martina Margini & Asli Seven
2013 Maison du Portugal, Shakirail, Paris, FR / KSAT, Happenings: Refractions, La Peau, Baigner, The Looking Glass, curated by Yasmine Tashk & Martina Margini
2008 Samson Projects, Boston, MA/ Chain Mail Show, curated by Camilo Alvarez
Academic Appointments / Visiting Critic
2026 Seminar Faculty, ‘Elastic Time’, Clark University MFA / MassMoCA
2025 Visiting Critic, Williams College, Bennington College, Columbia University
2023-2024 Visiting Faculty, ‘Experimental Drawing II’, Bard College
2017-2018 Visiting Fellow, Department of Philosophy, Harvard University
Awards, Residencies, Special Projects
2026
Mahler & LeWitt Studios, Residency
Foundation for Contemporary Art, Emergency Grant
Artist Resource Trust, Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation
2025
CAA Professional Development Award for Visual Art
Cittadellarte Pistolletto Foundation, Residency
Martha Boschen Porter Fund
Documentation as Poetic-Witness, Belding Memorial Library, Association for Rural & Small Libraries
2024
Massachusetts Cultural Council Grants for Creative Individuals
Puffin Foundation Grant
lower_cavity, Residency
2023
Municipal Art League Fellowship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Vermont Carving Studio & Sculpture Center, New Roads Full Scholarship
George, Memorial Exhibition for New Media Curator & Art Historian, George Fifield, Boston Cyberarts Gallery, Co-Curator
Arts, Science + Culture Graduate Collaboration Grant, UChicago/SAIC
Documentation as Poetic-Witness, online, at Louis Place
2022
Headlands Center for the Arts, Residency
Documentation as Poetic-Witness, Performance Philosophy Conference, Aalto University
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
Documentation as Poetic-Witness, Department of Philosophy, Harvard University
Documentation as Poetic-Witness, Institut Jean Nicod, École Normale Superieure
2018
Harvard University Department of Philosophy, Visiting Fellow
The Studios at MassMoCA, Residency
Evidence of a Signal, Crowley Theater, Marfa, TX
2017
Allen Ginsberg first edition tribute book, ‘AH Allen’, 55 eds. 45 Beat Generation artists, Archivist
2016
Louise Bourgeois Documentary, Robert Coen & Jean-Louis Bourgeois, Researcher/Assistant
Galerie Ofr., 20th Anniversary Salon Exhibition, Paris, FR
2015
ICA Boston, John Cage’s ‘Theater Piece No.1’, Black Mountain College Exhibition
Latent Lavender, Ryan Lee Gallery, NYC
2014
Voy(age)ur, STREAM Gallery, Brooklyn, NYC
Untitled (Chamber), AIDS ACTION COMMITTEE & Alter Projects, Miami, FL
2013
KSAT, Maison du Portugal, Paris, FR
Les Douches, Paris, FR
Current statement of work:
My current work develops from the premise that form produces time. This approach invites an open-ended perspective of the contradictions that exist between physical, psychological, and retinal experiences in the body. Thinking about nature, meaning, and the bodily relation to earth’s forces, I work to intervene and reveal these unfixed conditions of material life. I am exploring how the physical body encounters landscapes, asking what kind of landscapes we are seeing or not seeing. I am thinking about porous boundaries that influence how forms materialize in time and space. Organized by broad questions about reality and movement, my practice processes how the multitudes within each form belong together, across spaces and across time.