CondemNATION

Curated by Zeinab Saab and Olivia Richardson

Aaron Coleman

About the Artist

Born January 29th, 1985 – Washington D.C.

Aaron is a multi-disciplinary artist, Associate Professor and Kenneth E. Tyler Endowed Chair at the Herron School of Art and Design in Indianapolis. He received his MFA from Northern Illinois University in 2013. Aaron has participated in international residencies and exhibitions and has received numerous awards for his work in printmaking, sculpture and installation including 2021 Black Box Press Foundation’s Art as Activism Grant. He is a 2022 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellowship semi-finalist and the recipient of the 2023 New Voices Fellowship from the International Print Center New York. His work can be found in the collections of The Janet Turner Print Museum, the Ino-cho Paper Museum in Kochi, Japan, The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, The Yekaterinburg Museum of Art in Yekaterinburg, Russia, the National Library of France, and the Artist Printmaker and Photographer Research Archive in the Museum of Texas Tech University among many other public and private collections.

Aaron was a co-founder of the Sienna Collective for Students of Color in the Arts at the University of Arizona and in 2021 received the Provost Award for Innovations in Teaching as well as the College of Fine Arts Undergraduate Mentorship Award.

Aaron’s hobbies change from year to year but currently include the cultivation of rare, terrestrial, African orchids. He is a husband, dog lover and workaholic.

Artist:

Aaron Coleman

Exhibition

CondemNATION

Artist Statement

My current studio practice comprises an amalgam of creative processes and historical research. Utilizing printmaking, painting, collage, sculpture, and installation, I create works that address how mundane and seemingly anodyne artifacts embody the complex and pervasive history of race/racism and class/classicism in the United States. Employing a multi-media approach, I rework and re-contextualizes images and objects, foregrounding their interactions – both past and present – in this history. The objects (e.g., picket fences, coloring books, textiles, turf, basketball court flooring) are visually or physically juxtaposed with contrary or jarring images that release uncomfortable truths and suppressed stories which are both personal and political. Importantly, my creative production is grounded in substantial research. Most recently this has been a critical analysis of authoritarian systems of information, control, and power. I focus on how religion, politics, certain methodologies of science and anthropology, and the criminal justice system contribute to and sustain race- and class-based oppression.