Aaron R. Turner (b.1990 | West Memphis, Arkansas )
based in Northwest Arkansas
EDUCATION
2016 - Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers University, M.F.A
2014 - Ohio University, M.A. - Visual Communications
2012 - The University of Memphis, B.A.
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2022 - [Untitled]
Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans, LA (forthcoming December)
2022 - Black Alchemy: new paintings & photographs
TONE (Mitchell Gallery), Memphis, TN(forthcoming, November 17th)
2022 - Black Alchemy: if this one thing is true - Redux
Staniar Gallery, W & L Universit, Lexington, VA (forthcoming September)
2022 - Nothing Even Matters (select images from Black Alchemy Vol. 1, 2, & 3)
"Perspectives Gallery" at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
2022 - [as luck would have it], Virginia Tech, College of Architecture & Urban Studies
2022 - Yesterday Once More,
Walton Arts Center, Joy Pratt Markham Gallery |Fayetteville, AR ( January 15th - April 3rd)
2021 - Black Alchemy: If this one thing is true, curated by Drew Sawyer
Houston Center for Photography | November 19 –January 9, 2021, Houston, TX
2021 - Black Alchemy: Backwards/Forwards,
Light Work - Kathleen O. Ellis Gallery | January 19 - March 4, Syracuse, NY
2019 - Black Alchemy, startUP Art Fair Houston
Hotel ICON - Houston Texas Oct. 11-13
2017 - Arkansas Delta - October 4 - November 1
Mercer County Community College James Kerney Campus Gallery | Trenton, NJ
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2022
- Spectrum, TONE (Mitchell Gallery), Memphis, TN
- TIS03, Washington University | Sam Fox School of Design and Visual Arts (St. Louis, MO)
- Subject - Object, Richard F. Brush Art Gallery, St. Lawrence University | Canton, NY
- On the Grid: Ways of Seeing in Print, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College | Poughkeepsie, NY
2021
- What I know to be true, and other encounters, curated by Annette An-Jen Liu, Photo Access Australia
- Shaping Identity: A Non-Linear Journey, The Baldwin Photographic Gallery, Middle Tennessee State University
- Collaborating with the Archive, Filter Photo - Chicago, IL
- Source Material, Colorado Photographic Arts Center
- This Is The Day: Reckoning and Rejoice, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art
- The Ongoing Moment: Recent Acquisitions of Photography | Loeb, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College
-Dos Mundos 20/21 (SUNY Fredonia, SUNY Binghamton, SUNY Stony Brook )
2020
- Dos Mundos 20/21, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art at SUNY New Paltz
- Photography Now 2020, Center for Photography at Woodstock,
2019
- A-I-R: New Acquisitions 2019, Hallway Gallery | Light Work Syracuse, NY
- Photography in Memphis, Memphis Brooks Museum of Art - Memphis, TN
- SUBJECT ≠ OBJECT, En Foco Photography Fellowship Exhibition | Longwood Art Gallery @Hostos - Bronx, NY
- Quiet as Kept: Passing Subjects, Contested Identities, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College Poughkeepsie, NY
2018
- “In Place Of Self” Czurles-Nelson Gallery at SUNY Buffalo State, curated by Yola Monakhov Stockton (Patrice Helmar, S. Billie Mandle, Jared Thorne, Aaron Turner)
AWARDS & RESIDENCIES
2022 214 Artist Residency | CACHE ( Creative Arkansas Community Hub & Exchange)
2022 Darryl Chappell Artist in Residence at Ogden Museum of Southern Art
2021 Creator Labs Photo Fund | Google & Aperture Foundation
2021 Juror’s Choice Award (Collaborating with the Archive) | Filter Photo
2021 The Silver List | Silver Eye Center for Photography, The Black List, and Carnegie Mellon University
2021 HCP Fellowship | Houston Center for Photography
2020 Artist 360 Grant | Mid-America Arts Alliance
2020 Critical Mass Top 50 | Photolucida
2020 BASEMENT Art Space Residency (Digital) (Chapel Hill, NC) - September
2020 Emergency Relief Grant | American Academy of Arts and Letters
2020 Visual Studies Workshop, Project Space Residency - Rochester, NY
2018 Light Work Artist-in-Residence Program - (August ) Syracuse University
2016 Brovero Photography Prize | Mason Gross School of the Arts, Rutgers
BOOKS
2022
- Monograph: Black Alchemy Vol. 1 & 2 (forthcoming 2022), Publisher: Sleeper Studio
- There may still be time left, Publisher: Visual Studies Workshop
2021
- A New Nothing publication series a new nothing, Vol. 1, 2, & 3
- Contact Sheet 210: Aaron Turner, Light Work
- Black Alchemy: if this one thing is true (TIS03), Publisher: TIS Books
COLLECTIONS
Center for Creative Photography (CCP), University of Arizona
The Candela Collection
Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center - Vassar College
The MC Hotel - Montclair, NJ
Telfair Museum of Art/Jepson Center in Savannah, GA
Light Work – Syracuse, NY
Archive of Documentary Arts at Duke University’s David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library
Looking At Appalachia
Indie Photobook Library
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
2022
- Pictures Worth 1,000 Words: Artist adds books, music to his exhibition | Arkansas Democrat Gazette
- ‘Black Alchemy’: A Q&A with photographer Aaron Turner | The Arkansas Times
2021
- Aperture and Google Have Announced the Winners of Their New Photography Fund, Vogue (Sept, 30, 2021)
- Aaron Turner: An Interview by Jessica D. Brier, Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center (March 31st)
- Video - Delta Voices: Artists of the Mid-South -- Aaron R. Turner, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts | Video Link
- Podcast - Delta Voices: Artists of the Mid-South, Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts | Episode Link
- ‘Simple, Dark, and Deep’: Photographic Theorizations of As-Yet Schools | Postdigital Science and Education. https://doi.org/10.1007/s42438-021-00233-9 (PDSE) organized by Sarah Pfohl Assistant Professor, University of Indianapolis Department of Art & Design (July)
- Interview with photographer Aaron Turner, F-Stop Magazine
- ‘The Photo Ethics Podcast, Season 2 Ep. 10 , Photography Ethics Centre
- Illustration and in print cover, The New York Times Opinion, Sunday Edition
- Human/Nature guest edited by Andy Horowitz, Southern Cultures, UNC Press -The Center for the Study of the American South, UNC-Chapel Hill (Spring 2021)
- The Careful Photograph, Episode #2, Podcast interview with Tarrah Krajnak, Director, Munroe Center for Social Inquiry (MSCI) |Pitzer College (Feb. 22)
- Poignant photos celebrating women of the African diaspora Complex identities, A new exhibition brings together the work of three artists navigating contemporary life in the US, raising pertinent questions about identity, place, migration and immigration Text by Miss Rosen | Huck Magazine (Tuesday 19th January, 2021)
- The Truth About Tulsa, Smithsonian Magazine Cover & Opening Illustrations | April 2021 Issue | Tulsa 1921:
- THE PROMISE OF OKLAHOMA, How the push for statehood led a beacon of racial progress to oppression and violence
- AMERICAN TERROR, A century ago in Tulsa, a murderous mob attacked the most prosperous black community in the nation
- Cover, April 2021 Issue
- We Mourn for All We Know, The Atlantic Magazine Cover, March 2021 Issue
- Cover: We Mourn for All We Know
- Stories of Slavery, From Those Who Survived It The Federal Writers’ Project narratives provide an all-too-rare link to our past. by Clint Smith
- Do We Ask Too Much of Black Heroes? By Imani Perry, The New York Times (Jan. 29, 2021)
2020
- What is Black Alchemy? A Conversation on Abstraction and Identity,
- Black Alchemy, Special Critical MassIssue - Issue 141 ,Fraction Magazine (December)
- Curatorial Statement by Aaron Turner for exhibition catalogue; Women of the African Diaspora: Identity, Place, Migration, Immigration, published by Blue Sky Gallery, edited by Chris Rauschenberg (December)
- THE MISSING BLACK NOTES By Harmony Holiday | The Oxford American ISSUE 111, WINTER 2020 (Image: “Studio Floor #2” (2018), series Black Alchemy Vol. 2)
- Illustration #1 | Illustration #2 - THE FIRSTS: The children who desegregated America, The Atlantic, (Sept. 29th)
- Home Alone Together, Material Religion: The Journal of Objects, Art, and Belief. Issue 16.5 , published by Routledge (Taylor & Francis). (December 2020)
- Dos Mundos (RE)CONSTRUCTING NARRATIVES A SUNY Traveling Photography Exhibition | NUEVA LUZ, Photographic Journal
- B&H Photography Podcast: Internal Thoughts About Past Histories: Aaron Turner and Laylah Amatullah Barrayn
- United Nations of Photo: A Photographic Life Podcast - 118: Plus Aaron Turner - What Does Photography Mean to You? by Grant Scott (UK)
- What is Black Alchemy? A Conversation on Abstraction and Identity | Interview with Jon Feinstein, Humble Arts Foundation
- PHOTOGRAPH OF THE WEEK #97 , Laurence Miller Gallery (July)
- Aaron Turner Speaks on Institutional Shortcomings & Reclaiming the Narrative of Black Photographers | Interview with Akea Brown, Shades Collective (July)
- See In Black - Vol. 001 Black In America | https://seeinblack.com/