Grace Rosario Perkins opens solo show at Whitney Museum
Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers marks the first solo museum presentation in New York City for Grace Rosario Perkins (Akimel O’odham/Diné, b. 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico).
On view are ten recent works, including nine large-scale paintings completed between 2022 and the present, and a new large-scale sculpture (created with support from the Walker Youngbird Emerging Native Arts Grant). The exhibition’s title Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers, describes petroglyphs that connect the artist’s family to her tribal homelands in the southwestern United States, including the vital, yet threatened, waters of the Gila River and Rio Grande. The influence of such longstanding technologies of visual storytelling is evident in Perkins’s symbol-rich art.
Curator Adrienne Edwards says of Perkins, “As an artist who combines diaristic accounts, a do-it-yourself ethos, and spirituality into her process, Grace makes works that are embedded with and thereby index both personal and worldly meaning. Her art examines themes like familial reconciliation, botanical healing, addiction in communities, and embracing one’s power as someone who is queer, Indigenous, and feminine. Influenced by longstanding methodologies of visual ideograms that precede and are beyond the Western art historical canon, she is constantly developing a dynamic and singular language of abstraction.”
Perkins builds the surfaces of her densely layered paintings with acrylic and spray paint, found materials, personal belongings, and textual fragments through a process of addition and redaction. She references popular and material culture as they converge with more intimate reflections on grief, love, and hope. In her words: “I use painting to get everything out. I use painting as a way to move a lot of energy–good, bad, highs, and lows. Painting is a healing ritual. When I paint, it’s like singing a song or dancing. It is solitary but I still find ways to bring people in, always. I believe everyone should have access to their own personal agency and healing. I didn’t go to art school but spent over a decade as an educator working with adults with disabilities, at-risk youth, in rehab centers, and in hospice. Just make something. That’s what this is about… just having the permission to take stuff that feels good or feels bad and moving it.”
Grace Rosario Perkins: Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers is curated by Adrienne Edwards with Rose Pallone. The exhibition continues through February 8, 2026, in the first floor gallery of the Whitney Museum of American Art.