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Anna Mayer
Anna Mayer (she/her) uses ceramics—dirt that becomes stone-like once heated—to respond to colonial legacies within land use, archaeology, and 1960s-70s Land Art. Through projects that enact various kinds of burial and recovery, she points to extractive and exploitative human behaviors towards the land. Mayer’s materials include human-made artifacts, soft and hard sediments, complex psychological states, and harnessed fire.
A 2023-24 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, Mayer’s recent solo exhibitions include the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2021) and the Jung Center (Houston, 2022), as well as A-B Projects, AWHRHWAR, and Adjunct Positions, all in Los Angeles. Group exhibitions include Artpace (TX), Moody Center for the Arts (TX), Blaffer Art Museum (TX), Ballroom Marfa (TX), California Museum of Photography, and Los Angeles Nomadic Division (CA). Mayer’s work has been included in the 2014 Glasgow International biennial (UK) and the 2012 Hammer Museum’s Venice Beach Biennial (CA). She has a 19-year collaborative practice with Jemima Wyman called CamLab, which has staged large-scale engagements in Los Angeles at MOCA and the Hammer Museum, as well as enacted intimate exchanges with just a few people at a time. In 2021 Mayer was invited by UK organizations Arts Cabinet and the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society to be part of a wildfire residency, for which she conducted collaborative research with an engineer from the Hazelab at Imperial College, London.
A 2023-24 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, Mayer’s recent solo exhibitions include the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft (2021) and the Jung Center (Houston, 2022), as well as A-B Projects, AWHRHWAR, and Adjunct Positions, all in Los Angeles. Group exhibitions include Artpace (TX), Moody Center for the Arts (TX), Blaffer Art Museum (TX), Ballroom Marfa (TX), California Museum of Photography, and Los Angeles Nomadic Division (CA). Mayer’s work has been included in the 2014 Glasgow International biennial (UK) and the 2012 Hammer Museum’s Venice Beach Biennial (CA). She has a 19-year collaborative practice with Jemima Wyman called CamLab, which has staged large-scale engagements in Los Angeles at MOCA and the Hammer Museum, as well as enacted intimate exchanges with just a few people at a time. In 2021 Mayer was invited by UK organizations Arts Cabinet and the Leverhulme Centre for Wildfires, Environment and Society to be part of a wildfire residency, for which she conducted collaborative research with an engineer from the Hazelab at Imperial College, London.