SHORT BIO

Suzanne McClelland's practice includes large-scale paintings, works on paper, and books. These often extract fragments of speech or text from various cultural sources; explore the social, symbolic, and material possibilities that reside within language; and celebrate the physicality of speech and sound. McClelland parses such issues as the limitations and malleability of communication and the mechanics of translation. Her works are generated from social observation, underscoring the way in which language itself is gendered and politicized by its physical and spatial context.

McClelland’s work has been exhibited extensively since the early 1990s. Solo exhibitions have been presented at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Ridgefield, CT; Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York, NY; the Fralin Museum of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA; The Weatherspoon Art Musuem and the Orlando Museum of Art, FL. Her work was included in the 1993 and 2014 Whitney Biennials, and in group exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Parrish Art Museum, NY; Wexner Center for the Arts, OH; Pulitzer Arts Foundation, MO;  and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, NY. 

Her work is held in numerous public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art (NY), the Metropolitan Museum of Art (NY), The Parrish Art Museum (NY), the Walker Art Center (MN), the Brooklyn Museum (Brooklyn, NY), and The Whitney Museum of American Art (NY), among others. 

Awards and residencies include an Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, awarded by the National Academy of Design; a Guggenheim Fellowship, PS1/ Clocktower Artist Residency, a Nancy Graves Foundation Grant, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, an Anonymous Was A Woman Award; Lab Grant Residency with Dieu Donne Papermill; Visiting Artist Residency with Urban Glass in Brooklyn, NY; and Resident Artist Faculty in 1999 and 2022 with the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine, where she has served on the board of governors since 2000.   Recent publications include the monograph “Suzanne McClelland: 36-24-36,” featuring an essay by Thierry de Duve, published by Jose Friere/ team (Gallery, Inc.) and distributed by D.A.P. Mcclelland is represented by Marianne Boesky Gallery, NYC.

McClelland was born in Jacksonville, Florida and earned a BFA from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. earned an MFA at the School of the Visual Arts, New York, NY. McClelland lives and works in Brooklyn and Orient NY