Andrea Carlson


Andrea Carlson is a Grand Portage Ojibwe painter based in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Education

Carlson earned a BA from the University of Minnesota in 2003 and an MFA from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2005.

Art career

Carlson draws from her Anishinaabe and Scandinavian heritage as a basis for her highly stylized work. She was influenced by Ojibwe artist George Morrison.
Carlson also explores the role of the museum in the representation and interpretation of cultural objects. She has said that "By citing pieces from the museum's collection in my artwork, I appropriate those objects by drawing them into imagined landscapes. The museum is a landscape in its own right, fostering and assimilating objects foreign to itself." Carlson's work and writing challenges museums to evolve beyond long-standing Western institutional paradigms, and to grapple with their colonial past. Carlson has employed cannibalism as a metaphor for cultural consumption in her paintings' titles and imagery, naming her "Windigo" series for an Anishinaabe winter cannibal that often misidentifies those it consumes.

Group Exhibitions

Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Weisman Art Museum, the British Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada.