Jeanine Oleson is an interdisciplinary artist working with images, materiality, and language, which she forms into complex and humorous objects, instruments, images, videos, and performances.
Oleson has exhibited and performed at many venues including Cubitt Gallery, London; Hammer Museum, LA; Commonwealth & Council, LA; Coreana Museum, Seoul; SculptureCenter, NY; New Museum, NY; Beta-Local, San Juan, PR; Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO; and Socrates Sculpture Park, NY. She has received a Creative Capital artist grant, a Franklin Furnace Fellowship, and a Jerome Foundation travel and study grant. She has been in residence at the Hammer Museum, the New Museum, Smack Mellon Studio Program, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Oleson has published three books: What? and The Greater New York Smudge Cleanse, and a new book, Conduct Matters, published by Dancing Foxes Press in 2020. She is also a lead collaborator since 2013 on a participatory project, “Photo Requests from Solitary,” that provides images to people held in solitary confinement and supports advocacy efforts to end the practice in U.S. prisons.
In residence at MacDowell in 2016, Oleson worked on a video, performance, objects, and photographic prints for an exhibition at the Hammer Museum. During her 2022 Fellowship, she worked on a series of cast ceramic and slumped glass topographies and prepared a libretto from a recent performance, "Breathe in the World" for inclusion in a publication.
