Bio
Aza Erdrich Abe (b.1989) is a visual artist based in Minneapolis. She received her BA from Dartmouth College in 2012, majoring in Studio Art with a minor in Native American Studies and is currently pursuing an MFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts. A Turtle Mountain Anishinaabe descendant, her work concerns narratives of family, loss, identity, and survival. With a continuing aesthetic curiosity, she works primarily on 2D surfaces in ink and acrylic, incorporating culturally traditional motifs and media such as beadwork and birchbark, as well as her own signature gridded style and semiotic system. Following her debut solo exhibition at All My Relations Arts Gallery, her work was acquired by the Minneapolis Institute of Art as well as multiple personal collections. She has collaborated with numerous Indigenous artists and organizations in her community as an illustrator and designer, and maintains a generative studio practice creating her own original work. She is represented by The Wylie Agency in New York.
Artist Statement (Synthesis 2016)
Throughout these works, I contemplate Anishinaabe identity, familial narrative and personal growth. My paintings unfold on a grid - mostly visible, sometimes imperceptible, but always present. My approach to gridwork is at times confrontational. For me, the grid evokes a Western imposition of boundaries and measurements. Whether it is in terms of geography, time or identity, my work acknowledges that contemporary society is heavily codified and digitized. Within this “modern” existence, Native people have been subject to extreme forms of measurement: lands allotted, artifacts and ancestors exhumed to be catalogued, and the blood quantum of individuals generationally mapped. These systems impose their structure on my lived identity as a fair-skinned Native woman. Concurrently, my goal is to experiment with the constraints of the grid by suffusing Anishinaabe symmetry into my work. This feels natural to me, as these cultural elements informed my artistic growth from an early age. If you were to visit my family’s home, you would witness our culture’s visual language, one of skillful love and balance, present in jewelry, baskets, beadwork, quilts and artwork. I am continually inspired by these designs and patterns, as well as how we choose to adorn our loved ones and life itself. I seek a visual synthesis, a way to harmonize this multitude of complexities into a form unique to my individual experience. Each piece is a re-imposition; sometimes I succumb to the grid, at times I shirk the grid, but my ultimate aim is to create a vantage point that transcends boundaries.
