ANDREA BOWERS

As our global freedoms decline, Andrea Bowers is trying to move from grief to hope by focusing on youth activists beginning with the new video, My Name Means Future. Centred on Tokata Iron Eyes, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe who has been involved with the movement to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline since its inception, the video continues Bowers’s commitment to documenting important activists of her time. Bowers asked the young activist to show her some of her most sacred places in South Dakota. With a small group of friends—all artists and activists, they traveled together for 4 days in September recording video interviews and landscape drone shots of the youth activist discussing the landscapes, their histories, as well as the personal and political issues that arose from being in these sacred sites. In the Lakota language, ‘Tokata’ means ‘Future’.

In response to her journey with Iron Eyes and the climate emergency we are currently experiencing, Bowers has created a new series of neon works based on the designs of tree branches that incorporate quotes from eco-feminists. These monumental and sculptural pieces are made entirely of reused and recycled materials, inspired by Judi Bari and the Earth First call to action, ‘Resist Reuse Restore’.

Andrea Bowers lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. Recent solo exhibitions include: Weserburg Museum, Bremen, Germany, 2019, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, 2019, Hammer Projects: Andrea Bowers, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles 2017; Womxn Workers of the World Unite!, Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati 2017; Andrea Bowers: Sanctuary, Bronx Museum, New York, 2016; In Situ 1 - Andrea Bowers, Espace Culturel Louis Vuitton, Paris, 2014; #sweetjane, Pomona and Pitzer College Museum of Art, Claremont, 2014; The Weight of Relevance, Wiener Secession, Vienna, traveled to The Power Plant, Toronto 2007. Recent group exhibitions include Agora, The High Line, New York, 2018; Power to the People. Political Art Now, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt. 2018; Documenta 14, Fridericianum, Kassel, 201); La Terra Inquieta, Triennale di Milano, Milan, 2017; The Revolution Will Not Be Gray, Aspen Art Museum, Aspen, 2016; Drawing Now, Albertina, Vienna, 2015. Bowers’ work is held in the collections of The Hammer Museum of Art, Los Angeles, MoMA, New York, The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, and Museum Abteiberg, Moenchengladbach, Germany, among others.