The Department of Fine Arts presents a visiting artist lecture by
Erin Jane Nelson
Monday, September 14, at 12:30 PM
Grace Street Theater
934 W Grace St, Richmond, VA 23220
Erin Jane Nelson is an interdisciplinary artist based in Santa Fe, NM. She has had solo exhibitions at Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at The University of Alabama at Birmingham; the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia; Chapter NY, New York; DOCUMENT, Chicago; and the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, among others. Her work was included in the Whitney Biennial 2026 and 2021 New Museum Triennial and has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as The San Jose Art Museum, The Phoenix Art Museum, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Aspen Art Museum; the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, Netherland La Galerie, centre d’art contemporain, Noisy-le-Sec; and the Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich. Nelson was a recipient of the 2023 Guggenheim Fellowship in Fine Arts.
Erin Jane Nelson’s practice is grounded in photography sourced from her personal archive of found and original images. Raised—and later based—in the American South, Nelson travels throughout the region to photograph her surroundings and lived experiences. She intuitively merges these images onto unexpected support structures—including silk, hand-crafted quilts, panels, and ceramic inspired by vernacular craft objects and the history of collage—their multiple references engaging the nuanced anxiety, conflict, and humor of the present and immediate future. Her work plays with the hierarchies of value, class, and taste in contemporary culture, often embracing femme cuteness as a potent symbolic tool. Nelson’s newest works have expanded to include ceramic cameras that the artist creates herself and uses to capture landscape photographs that further emphasize the material and conceptual foundation of her practice.
A Carnivorous Year
2023
Pigment prints, sequins, and bio-based resin on glazed stoneware
62 x 64 x 5 in.
Erin Jane Nelson
Photograph by Charles Benton
Courtesy of the artist, Chapter NY, New York, and DOCUMENT, Chicago | Lisbon
