Andrea Carlson

Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe) is a visual artist currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Carlson’s expansive practice cites entangled cultural narratives and institutional practices of possession and display. Her studio work includes multi-part paintings and drawings that feature iterative panoramic views of Indigenous futures. Her large-scale site-specific installations layer together imagery and Indigenous languages in an effort to provide visibility for Indigenous peoples within settler cities. 

Carlson’s work has been acquired by institutions such as the Denver Art Museum, the British Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Walker Art Center, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow, a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant recipient, and a 2022 United States Artists Fellow. Beyond her artistic practice, Carlson has also served as a writer, curator, and lecturer. She is a co-founder of the Center for Native Futures — the only Native art center in Chicago.

Her recent commission, Future Cache, is on display at the University of Michigan Museum of Art through the summer of 2024. In this installation, Carlson combines text and imagery to bring attention to the history of violent displacement of the Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band from northern Michigan. For her Penny Stamps talk, Carlson will present on this work, as well as an overview of her career, her changing perspective, and her plans for the future.

Special thanks to the Cheboiganing (Burt Lake) Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians. For more information visit Burt​Lake​Band​.org.

Lead support for Future Cache is provided by Lizzie and Jonathan Tisch, Erica Gervais Pappendick and Ted Pappendick, and the U‑M Office of the Provost.

In partnership with the University of Michigan Museum of Art.

Series presenting partners: Detroit Public Television and PBS Books. Media partner: Michigan Radio.