Rashid Johnson is among an influential cadre of contemporary American artists whose work employs a wide range of media to explore themes of art history, individual and shared cultural identities, personal narratives, literature, philosophy, materiality, and critical history. From his origins as a photographer, Johnson’s practice quickly expanded to embrace a wide range of media—including sculpture, painting, drawing, filmmaking, and installation—yielding a complex multidisciplinary practice incorporating diverse materials rich with symbolism and personal history. His work features pointed narratives embedded with everyday objects that frequently reference his childhood and aspects of history and cultural identity. Many of Johnson’s recent works delve into existential themes, such as personal and collective anxiety, interiority, and liminal space.

Rashid Johnson was born in 1977 in Chicago, IL. He earned his BA from Columbia College Chicago in Chicago, IL (2000) and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, IL (2005).

He has mounted recent solo exhibitions at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden (2023); Hauser & Wirth in Hong Kong, China (2023); The Metropolitan Opera in New York City, NY (2021); Creative Time in New York City, NY (2021); National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Canada (2021); Storm King Art Center in New Windsor, NY (2021); Hauser & Wirth in London, UK (2020); The Aspen Art Museum in Aspen, CO, and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City (2019); and elsewhere.

His work has been included in recent group exhibitions such as “Multiplicity: Blackness in Contemporary American Collage” (traveling exhibition) at The Phillips Collection in Washington DC, and The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston in Houston, TX ( 2024); “Change Agents. Women Collectors Shaping the Art World” at the Southampton Arts Center in Southampton, NY (2023); “Before Tomorrow – Thirty Years of Astrup Fearnley Museet” at Astrup Fearnley Museet in Oslo, Norway (2023); “People Watching: Contemporary Photography since 1965” at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, ME (2023); “Sounds of Blackness” at the Metropolitan Museum of Manila in Manila, Philippines (2023); “Presence of Plants in Contemporary Art” at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, MA (2023); and others.

He is the winner of an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Directing (2020), the Aspen Award for Art (2018), a Tony Goldman Visionary Artist Award (2017), a Panerai Design Miami Visionary Award (2017), the David C. Driskell Prize (2012), and others.