Nyeema Morgan (b. Philadelphia, PA) was raised in Greenville, North Carolina and Minneapolis, Minnesota by parents Clarence Morgan and the late Arlene Burke-Morgan, both artists and educators. Morgan attended the Cooper Union School of Art in New York, earned her MFA from the California College of the Arts and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She is currently an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She resides in Chicago with her husband, artist Mike Cloud and their two children.

Working across drawing, sculpture, installation and print-based media Morgan’s multimedia practice is driven by a deep curiosity about how articulations of power are woven into our encounters with images, objects and information. The artist references cultural materials such as jokes, recipes, fables and traps as entry points into conceptually layered works. Morgan characterizes her practice as a “study”, a study of the mechanics of representation and signification inspired by ideological questions. Morgan’s work draws attention to how the soft political power of our cultural material shapes our beliefs and understanding of our social and political reality.

Solo and two-person presentations of Morgan’s works include: the Neubauer Collegium for Culture & Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago, IL; Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY; PATRON, Chicago, IL; Grant Wahlquist Gallery, Portland, ME and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Boulder, CO among others. Her group exhibitions include: the Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY; The Drawing Center, New York, NY; The Green Gallery, Milwaukee, WI and the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME and Galerie Jeanroch Dard, Paris, FR.

Morgan is the recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts’ Grant to Visual Artists, Harpo Foundation Visual Artist Grant, the Chicago Artadia Award, a Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant and an Art Matters Grant. Her work is included in the public collections of The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick, ME; The Menil Collection, Houston, TX (in collaboration with william cordova and Otabenga Jones & Associates); and Worcester Museum of Art, Worcester, MA.