Vadis Turner facts for kids
Vadis Turner (born 1977) is an American mixed media artist living in Tennessee. Her work encourages “the misbehaviors of domestic materials.” Exploring “the expressive possibilities of the grid," many works are titled after maligned female figures.
"My content often draws from tragic heroines from Greek mythology, literature and shared experiences from different generations of women. I partner these stories with domestic materials that have the potential to speak in some way…allowing them to transcend their intended functions, contradict their structural natures and betray traditional gender associations."
"Mannerist distortion is the ancestor of Surrealist fantasy, and Turner’s female grids—the distortion bespeaks their tragedy--are surrealist fantasies with an expressionistic twist." - Donald Kuspit, She Drank Gold Catalogue essay
Turner has had solo shows at the Frist Art Museum, TN; Huntsville Museum of Art, AL; University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO; and the Abroms-Engel Institute for Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL.
Her group shows include the Museum of Arts and Design, NY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; The Andy Warhol Museum, PA; The Bunker Artspace, FL; Kentucky Museum of Arts and Crafts, KY; 21C Museum Hotels, TN; Hunter Museum of American Art, TN; Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art & Design, ME; Minnesota Museum of American Art, MN; Islip Art Museum, NY; Knoxville Art Museum, TN; Susquehanna Museum of Art, PA; and Cheekwood Museum, TN.
Her works are in the permanent collections of several museums, including the 21C Museum, KY; Brooklyn Museum, NY; Kentucky Arts and Crafts Museum, KY; Tennessee State Museum, TN; University of Alabama, AL; Huntsville Museum of Art, AL; Hunter Museum of American Art, TN; The Bunker Artspace, FL; and Egon Schiele Art Centrum, Czech Republic.
Early life and education
Turner was born in Nashville, Tennessee and lives and works in Brooklyn. She received BFA and MFA degrees from Boston University.
Teaching
Turner taught art at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY as a Visiting Instructor from 2004 – 2008, an Adjunct Instructor from 2008 – 2012, and an Adjunct Associate Professor from 2012 – 2014. She has been a Lecturer of Art at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN since 2022.
Early career
During her years in New York, Turner manipulated domestic and feminine materials so that they would defy behavioral expectations and speak in new ways. Her "early practice involved making confrontational sculptures from nontraditional items, such as wax paper lingerie and a tampon wedding cake, in a vein similar to that of feminist artists during the late 1960s and ’70s."
"Vadis Turner, Tennessee born and current New York City artist, revamps the notion of handmade objects as they are incorporated in a defining and contradiction of conventional gender roles. Her mixed media pieces achieve an intricate, colorful and at times elegant pronouncement on matters feminine and are reverentially transcendental."
"Vadis Turner’s impassioned deconstructions... This is logical development from her longstanding feminist commitments. She has long sought to acknowledge what is at stake in rites of passage. …… The work that results is vital not because it is messy or gestural or expressive (though it is all of those things) but, rather, because of its keen psychological insight – because it is embedded in shared experience." - Glenn Adamson, Crafts Magazine, UK 2017 (about tampon wedding cake)
In 2009, Turner presented a series of contemporary heirlooms, Dowry, at Lyons Weir Gallery, NYC. Instead of using Dowry as "an offering of culturally valuable goods to socially advance a woman through marriage," Turner sold and traded it for her own professional gain. The body of work culminated in an installation, Reception, which was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum.
Turner has been described as striving for the "transcendence of the commonplace from its intended function into a vehicle for social commentary."
In 2012, Turner had a collaborative residency with Saya Woolfalk at the Museum of Arts and Design. In 2013, Turner was chosen as a resident artist by Materials for the Arts, where she created mixed media pieces with fashion industry textile scraps. MFTA described Turner's work as "'paint[ing]' with ribbon and fabric"; "She uses ribbons as lines, marks, and brushstrokes, large wads of fabric as stains of color, and smaller pieces as drips of hues."
"My compositions are created from partnering female characters with their changing environments."
"I like to invent alternative endings and afterlives for tragic female characters from literature. Ophelia and Eve are two examples."
"Turner slyly translates expressive exertions associated often with macho abstract painting into the anxieties of personal adornment that the culture at large encourages us - women especially - to experience. In doing this, she achieves a sort of social satire, possibly with a vein of self-criticism entwined in it, while fully satisfying a viewer's hope of seeing something generously, attentively and unpredictably invented."
Turner was awarded a Joan Mitchell Painters and Sculptors Grant in 2016.
Exhibitions
- Tempest, Frist Art Museum, TN
- Megaliths, Ent Center for the Arts, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, CO
- Cups and Grids, Geary, NY
- Encounters, Huntsville Museum of Art, AL
- She Drank Gold, Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama, Birmingham
- Craft Front and Center, Museum of Arts and Design, NY
In 2024, Turner’s works were included in Craft Front and Center at the Museum of Art and Design, NY curated by Alexandra Schwartz. "Look to the exhibition’s younger, contemporary artists as proof of craft’s continued relevance. Next to a magnificent Sheila Hicks prayer rug from 1968—on view for the first time since the 1980s after a much-needed restoration—is Vadis Turner’s Red Relic Vessel (2022), a twisted pretzel of cotton bed sheets, brick dust, and gold leaf."
Grants, awards, and residencies
Turner’s projects have been funded by the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, South Arts, Tennessee Arts Commission, and The Current Art Fund, a regranting program through the Andy Warhol Foundation.
Turner’s residencies include Corporation of Yaddo, NY (2018, 2024); Museum of Arts & Design, NY (2012); Materials for the Arts, NY (2013); Hambidge Center, GA (2020); and Vermont Studio Center, VT (2022).
