Artist Database

Grace Cross graduated with an MFA at the University of Illinois in Chicago in 2016 and holds a BFA from the Michaelis School of Art for which she was awarded the Judy Steiner painting prize in 2010. Cross’ transglobal upbringing across continents informs her material painting, video, and fibre practice. She enacts symbols about home, belief structures, and land; making shifting recipes rooted in history, performative archaeology, and African cosmology to reflect her cultural transmission across national boundaries.
Cross is a grant recipient from the University of Illinois in Chicago and the National Arts Council, South Africa. Cross is part of the feminist artist collective the Femme Gems and of the Chicago-based greenhouse art ecology project Uptool. Cross lives and works in Cape Town.
Drawing images through fibre and paint, that have been excavated in part from the past, she creates a present generative site. Her work conjures a deep history, bringing transformative cultural wisdoms and materials together to excavate and perforate the power of the symbol.

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