bio:
Ash Arder (she/they) is a transdisciplinary artist whose research-based approach works to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems – especially those related to ecology and/or industry. Ash manipulates physical and virtual environments to explore materials, mark making, mechanical portraiture and sound design as tools for complicating dynamics of power between humans, machines and the lands they occupy.
She has held artist residencies at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta (2024), Michigan Central x Newlab in Detroit (2024), University Musical Society in Ann Arbor (2021-22), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha (2021), Recess in Brooklyn (2019), and A Studio in the Woods in New Orleans (2017-18). Recent exhibitions include a solo show at the Cranbrook Art Museum (2023-24), and group shows at NXTHVN (2024), California African American Museum (2024), Swiss Institute (2024), and Amant (2023). Ash is a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and a two-time awardee of the Knight Foundation's Arts Challenge grant. She received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Ash lives and works in Waawiyaatanong (Detroit, Michigan) about an hour south of her hometown of Muscatawing (Flint).
Ash Arder (she/they) is a transdisciplinary artist whose research-based approach works to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems – especially those related to ecology and/or industry. Ash manipulates physical and virtual environments to explore materials, mark making, mechanical portraiture and sound design as tools for complicating dynamics of power between humans, machines and the lands they occupy.
She has held artist residencies at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta (2024), Michigan Central x Newlab in Detroit (2024), University Musical Society in Ann Arbor (2021-22), Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha (2021), Recess in Brooklyn (2019), and A Studio in the Woods in New Orleans (2017-18). Recent exhibitions include a solo show at the Cranbrook Art Museum (2023-24), and group shows at NXTHVN (2024), California African American Museum (2024), Swiss Institute (2024), and Amant (2023). Ash is a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and a two-time awardee of the Knight Foundation's Arts Challenge grant. She received an MFA from the Cranbrook Academy of Art.
Ash lives and works in Waawiyaatanong (Detroit, Michigan) about an hour south of her hometown of Muscatawing (Flint).
statement:
I was born and raised in Flint, Michigan by a widowed, single-parent father who worked in the automotive industry during the week and cultivated an elaborate garden on the weekend. My first teachings about art and creativity happened in the garden or during leisurely car rides listening to the blues. Before I learned about craft and design in museums and galleries, I saw people in my neighborhood building, modifying, and customizing everything from cars, to treehouses, to altars and memorials. Paintings didn’t just hang on the wall, they were worn. Beadwork was an active, dynamic practice displayed in the hairstyles of children – including myself. My work reflects my creative roots. Sculptures are interactive, modular, and comfortable inside or outdoors. Installations vibrate with sound or light, sending signals to those familiar with the textures of interior Black spaces. More recently, solar energy is used to power my work as both a practical and poetic gesture to those operating off-grid and at the margins either by choice or circumstance.
At the very core, my creative practice is concerned with the idea of relation. Relation is, for me, a basic tenet for understanding how collaboration between ideas and entities might occur. I use the idea of speculative collaboration as a framework to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems - especially those relating to ecology and industry. I understand collaboration to be a form of intimacy.
My work generates systems, exercises, meditations, demonstrations, and interventions that manifest as installation, sculpture, sound, drawing, electronics, video and performance. Each work ponders the role of agency, both active and passive, in co-creating an event or phenomenon. I am interested in complicating viewers’ own understanding of their proximity to and participation in systems and cycles reflected in my work and subsequently at larger societal and ecological scales. These complications or moments of tension between living entities, objects, space, and infrastructure serve as a catalyst for interrogating the very conditions responsible for the complication or glitch. My work and research probe historical events, popular culture, and industry for insight into what I think of as “relational glitches,” or ruptures in empathy. I am inspired and motivated by the potential of empathy, curiosity, wonder and play to slow the devastating effects of climate change.
I was born and raised in Flint, Michigan by a widowed, single-parent father who worked in the automotive industry during the week and cultivated an elaborate garden on the weekend. My first teachings about art and creativity happened in the garden or during leisurely car rides listening to the blues. Before I learned about craft and design in museums and galleries, I saw people in my neighborhood building, modifying, and customizing everything from cars, to treehouses, to altars and memorials. Paintings didn’t just hang on the wall, they were worn. Beadwork was an active, dynamic practice displayed in the hairstyles of children – including myself. My work reflects my creative roots. Sculptures are interactive, modular, and comfortable inside or outdoors. Installations vibrate with sound or light, sending signals to those familiar with the textures of interior Black spaces. More recently, solar energy is used to power my work as both a practical and poetic gesture to those operating off-grid and at the margins either by choice or circumstance.
At the very core, my creative practice is concerned with the idea of relation. Relation is, for me, a basic tenet for understanding how collaboration between ideas and entities might occur. I use the idea of speculative collaboration as a framework to expose, deconstruct or reconfigure physical and conceptual systems - especially those relating to ecology and industry. I understand collaboration to be a form of intimacy.
My work generates systems, exercises, meditations, demonstrations, and interventions that manifest as installation, sculpture, sound, drawing, electronics, video and performance. Each work ponders the role of agency, both active and passive, in co-creating an event or phenomenon. I am interested in complicating viewers’ own understanding of their proximity to and participation in systems and cycles reflected in my work and subsequently at larger societal and ecological scales. These complications or moments of tension between living entities, objects, space, and infrastructure serve as a catalyst for interrogating the very conditions responsible for the complication or glitch. My work and research probe historical events, popular culture, and industry for insight into what I think of as “relational glitches,” or ruptures in empathy. I am inspired and motivated by the potential of empathy, curiosity, wonder and play to slow the devastating effects of climate change.