GRACE ROSARIO PERKINS

CURRENT:

• I am happy to announce that I am the second recipient of the 2025 Walker Youngbird Emerging Artist Prize.

  The Emerging Native Arts Grant provides $15,000 over six months, along with mentorship from Foundation staff and Advisory Council members. The program supports emerging Native artists whose practices reflect cultural depth and material invention—bold work grounded in Indigenous experience.

  "There's a certain electricity in Grace's work—a mix of memory, ritual, and refusal that you don't come across often," said Reid Walker, founder of Walker Youngbird Foundation. "The curators, gallerists and cultural thinkers who guide our selections recognized that spark. She's building a language of her own, and we're honored to support it."

  The grant will support Perkins's project Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers, which includes large-scale paintings and a monumental sculpture created collaboratively with friends and family members near the Navajo Nation and Gila River Indian Community. At the center of the work is a sculptural installation made from found detritus—beer cans, aluminum, and fast-food packaging—collected from sites impacted by addiction and environmental harm. Cast in concrete and embedded with medicinal plants and materials, the work becomes a sculptural act of ritual and alchemy.

  The project includes youth programming with workshops engaging Indigenous and LGBTQ+ teens in shared storytelling and creative exploration.

  read press release here

• I’ve began a residency and fully funded fellowship via the Leon Polk Smith Foundation at the International Studio and Curatorial Program in NYC. ISCP provides 35 light filled studios and two galleries in Brooklyn NY and a global program tailored for professional growth for artists and curators. The program serves as an active mediator creating visibility and immersion for all its residents with an intentional program of talks, visits, trips, and exhibitions encouraging dialogue and collaboration. I will be in residence for 6 months.

• group exhibition, “Indigenous Identities: Here and Now” curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, on view through December 21 2025 at the Zimmerli Museum, Rutgers University, 71 Hamilton St, New Brunswick NJ

• biennial, “TREES NEVER END AND HOUSES NEVER END,” curated by Dan Colen, on view through Fall 2025 at Sky High Farm, 11 Main Street, Germantown NY

  more info here: https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/dan-colen-sky-high-farm-biennial-exhibition-1234742011/

  https://www.skyhighfarm.org/events

  full artist list: Autumn Ahn, Alvaro Barrington, Lauren Bon, Lizzi Bougatsos, Pia Camil, Anne Collier, CAConrad, Ann Craven, Sean Desiree, Natalie Diaz, Norman Douglas, Carroll Dunham, rafa esparza, Peter Fend, Yatika Starr Fields, Aaron Gilbert, Nan Goldin, Wade Guyton, Chase Hall, Lyle Ashton Harris, Harrison Studio, Roni Horn, Anne Imhof, Brian Jungen, Nance Klehm, Maia Ruth Lee, Stephen Lichty, Nate Lowman, Ryan McGinley, Mark Armijo McKnight, Bobbi Salvör Menuez, Andrew Moore, Paulo Nazareth, Jade Kuriki Olivo (Puppies Puppies), Grace Rosario Perkins, Utē Josephine Petit, Joey Piecuch (Family), Thiago Rocha Pitta, Myron Polenberg, Richard Prince, Sarah Rara/Lucky Dragons, Em Rooney, Marcos Saavedra, Michael Sailstorfer, Salem, Tschabalala Self, Marcus Leslie Singleton,Rudolf Stingel, Elaine Stocki, quori theodor, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Banks Violette, Charline von Heyl, and Ben Wigfall Estate/ Communications Village with Lauren Halsey

  FORTHCOMING:

• “Get in the Game: Sports, Art, Culture” originally on view at SFMOMA will be opening at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR on September 15 2025 and on display through January 2026.

  This exhibition features a large scale painting commission made for SFMOMA in 2024.

  Full artists and designers in this exhibition include: Virgil Abloh, Michael Alvarez, Emma Amos, Ernie Barnes, Lyndon Barrois Sr., Holly Bass, Kevin Beasley, Sko Habibi (Jasko Begovic), Willie Birch, Andrea Bowers, Mark Bradford, Thom Browne, Reggie Burrows Hodges, Miguel Calderón, Alejandra Carles-Tolra, Ryan James Caruthers, Maurizio Cattelan, Karla Diaz, Omar Victor Diop, Rosalyn Drexler, Celeste Dupuy-Spencer, Buck Ellison, Cara Erskine, Derek Fordjour, Samuel Fosso, Sam Frésquez, Jeffrey Gibson, Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parreno, Daniel Green, Lourdes Grobet, Chase Hall, David Hammons, Danny Hess, Mark Igloliorte, Cameron Jamie, Michael Jang, Martin Kazanietz, Savanah Leaf, Cary Leibowitz, Shaun Leonardo, Glenn Ligon and Byron Kim, Roberto Lugo, Louis Vuitton Malletier, Katrina Majkut, Tara Mateik, Sam McKinniss, Lucy McRae, Julie Mehretu, Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Juan Obando, Betsy Odom, Catherine Opie, Gabriel Orozco, Anna Park, Grace Rosario Perkins, Paul Pfeiffer, Cheryl Pope, Robert Pruitt, Ronny Quevedo, Deborah Roberts, Sheena Rose, Ben Sakoguchi, Ivan Salcido, William Scott, Joan Semmel, Jean Shin, Yinka Shonibare, Gary Simmons, Tabitha Soren, Tavares Strachan, Ashley Teamer, Felandus Thames, Hank Willis Thomas, Jake Troyli, and Martin Wong

• solo exhibition, “Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers,” curated by Adrienne Edwards, Engell Speyer Family Senior Curator and Associate Director of Curatorial Programs, with Rose Pallone, Curatorial Assistant, opens October 18 2025 at The Whitney Museum of American Art, 99 Gansevoort Street, New York NY

Grace Rosario Perkins: Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers marks the first solo museum exhibition in New York City for Grace Rosario Perkins (Akimel O'odham/Diné, b. 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico). The presentation brings together approximately ten recent works—primarily large-scale paintings made between 2022 and the present, including two paintings created specially for this exhibition, as well as a new sculpture.  

The title of the exhibition draws on imagery that connects the artist’s family to their tribal homelands in the southwestern United States. Perkins’s vibrant and layered works are shaped by an intuitive, dynamic process of addition and removal. Her materials are wide-ranging, often incorporating found objects and personal belongings such as photographs, jewelry, pages from books, fabric, plastic bags, plaster, and plant materials. Working with acrylic, spray paint, and collage, she constructs dense surfaces that speak to both individual and collective memory. Guided by diaristic encounters, DIY ethos, spirituality and plant medicine, the artist references popular and material culture, language, music, and sports as they converge with more intimate reflections on grief, love, and hope. 

Through abstraction, Perkins resists reductive representations of Indigenous identity, instead presenting an expansive vision rooted in both ancestral knowledge and the urgencies of now. Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers offers a vital and multifaceted portrait of an artist creating new forms of storytelling. 

• ALSO! In addition to painting, I work as an intuitive. My tarot books at the moment ARE CLOSED. Check back in the future for more info.

[ ig has more updates + announcements, life stuff @gracerosarioo ]