Rashid Johnson is a leading contemporary American artist whose multidisciplinary practice spans painting, sculpture, photography, video, filmmaking, and installation. Known for his innovative use of materials and deeply narrative works, Johnson explores themes of racial and cultural identity, African American history, personal and collective memory, philosophy, literature, and mysticism. His work challenges dominant historical frameworks while offering complex visual languages rooted in both personal experience and shared cultural narratives.
Johnson received a BFA in Photography from Columbia College Chicago in 2000 and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005, where he studied under artist Gregg Bordowitz and was introduced to critical theory through film, video, and new media. Although his early work focused on conceptual photography, his practice has since expanded to include richly symbolic assemblage, installation, and large-scale, wall-based works that engage in the legacy of painting and sculpture. His signature materials—including shea butter, black soap, books, vinyl records, ceramic tiles, and incense—are often associated with his upbringing and African diasporic traditions. Johnson combines these with self-made tools and a diverse range of mark-making techniques such as scoring, branding, engraving, and scraping to build dense, textural compositions that examine the intersections of personal history, Black cultural life, and existential reflection. As Johnson has stated, “The goal is for all of the materials to miscegenate into a new language, with me as its author.” Recent works delve into themes of anxiety, interiority, and the psychic weight of cultural inheritance, reflecting on both the individual and collective conditions of contemporary life. His evolving practice continues to push the boundaries of formalism and narrative, contributing to an expanded discourse on identity and meaning-making.
Johnson's (b.1977, Chicago, IL) work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions worldwide, including Rashid Johnson: A Poem for Deep Thinkers, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY (2025); Seven Rooms and a Garden: Rashid Johnson + Moderna Museet at Moderna Museet, Stockholm (2023); Nudiustertian at Hauser & Wirth, Hong Kong (2023); The Chorus at The Metropolitan Opera, New York (2021); Capsule at the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2021); The Crisis at Storm King Art Center, New Windsor, NY; Waves at Hauser & Wirth, London (2020); and the touring exhibition The Hikers at the Aspen Art Museum, Museo Tamayo (Mexico City), and Hauser & Wirth, New York (2019). Other notable exhibitions include Provocations at the Institute for Contemporary Art, Richmond (2018); No More Water at Lismore Castle Arts, Ireland (2018); and Hail We Now Sing Joy at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, which traveled to the Milwaukee Art Museum (2017).
His works are included in the collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Brooklyn Art Museum, NY; The High Museum, Atlanta, GA; Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Sweden; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), CA; Seattle Art Museum, WA, among many others. He currently lives and works in New York.