Chicago Works—Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons
 

The MCA is pleased to announce Chicago Works—Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in Chicago. This exhibition is the 26th iteration of Chicago Works, an exhibition series at the MCA that features artists shaping the contemporary art scene in the city and beyond. Opening on August 3, 2024, and running through February 2, 2025, Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons is presented in the MCA’s fourth-floor Turner Gallery.

Andrea Carlson (Grand Portage Ojibwe/European descent, b. 1979; based in northern Minnesota and Chicago, IL) considers how landscapes are shaped by history, relationships, and power. Her artworks imagine places that are “everywhere and nowhere,” visualizing these shifting yet ever-present dynamics. Grounded in Anishinaabe understandings of space and time, the works in this exhibition reflect on how land carries memories of colonial expansion and violence, as well as Indigenous presence and resistance.

Across painting, video, and sculpture, Carlson organizes imagined landscapes around one constant—the horizon. This line is reminiscent of her homelands on Lake Superior. It is also a significant art historical trope that artists have employed to depict territories as vast and vacant, ripe for the taking. Carlson’s prismatic works are not empty: they are densely layered with an abundance of motifs, making reference to the tactics of colonialism as well as her family and peers, Ojibwe culture, and Indigenous sovereignty. Confronting histories of erasure and dispossession, Carlson proposes that what appears to be lost can be remade, reimagined, or otherwise regained.

Andrea Carlson: Shimmer on Horizons is curated by Iris Colburn, Curatorial Associate. In celebration of the exhibition opening, Andrea Carlson will join Colburn in conversation at the MCA from 2–3:30pm on August 3.