Brooks Turner is an artist, writer, and educator based in Minneapolis, MN
contact him at jbrooksturner@gmail.com
EDUCATION
University of California, Los Angeles, Master of Fine Arts, 2015
Amherst College, Bachelor of Arts Cum Laude, 2012
PROFESSIONAL APPOINTMENTS
Chair of Visual Art Department, St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists, St. Paul, MN
2020 to present
Adjunct Faculty, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
2018 to 2023
Lecturer, University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, MN
2021 to 2023
Temporary Part-Time Faculty in Art, Ridgewater College, Willmar, MN
Fall, 2019
Research Assistant to Charles Ray, Los Angeles, CA
2015 to 2017
Instructor and Teaching Assistant, University of California, Los Angeles
2014 to 2015
FELLOWSHIPS, AWARDS, AND GRANTS
Jerome Hill Artist Fellow, Jerome Foundation, 2023
Adjunct Faculty Improvement Grant, Interfaculty Organization, St. Cloud State University, 2022
Creative Support for Individuals, Minnesota State Arts Board, 2022
Jerome Fellowship for Early Career Artists, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, 2021-22
Jerome Book Arts Residency, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, 2021-22
Target Studio Artist-in-Residence, Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, 2020
Project Support Grant, Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, 2020
Humanities Innovation Lab, Minnesota Humanities Center, 2020
Artist Initiative Grant, Minnesota State Arts Board, 2020
EXHIBITIONS
Solo and Two-Person
2024 Voters in Revolt, HAIR + NAILS Gallery, Minneapolis, MN
2023 Pedagogy and Propaganda, Perlman Teaching Museum, Carleton College, Northfield MN
2021 Order and Discipline, Ridgewater College, Willmar and Hutchinson Campuses, MN
2020 Legends and Myths of Ancient Minnesota, Weisman Art Museum, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN
Uncanny Familiarities of Scenes and People, Kiehl Gallery, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
2018 The Bridge, with Tamara Anne Turner, Lillian Davis Hogan Gallery at St. Mary’s University of Minnesota, Winona, MN
2017 Terrestrial Outlines, with Tamara Anne Turner, College of the Redwoods, Eureka, CA
Group
2024 1934 and Now: Connections to the 1934 Teamsters Strike, Cargill Gallery, Minneapolis Central Library, Minneapolis, MN
2023 2021/22 MCAD-Jerome Fellowship Exhibition, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, MN
2022 MCBA-Jerome Book Arts Residency XVI Exhibition, Minnesota Center for Book Arts, Minneapolis, MN
Faculty Exhibition, Kiehl Gallery, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, MN
2020 Untitled #16, juried by Natalie Bell, Soo Visual Arts Center, Minneapolis, MN
2017 All the Small Things, Steve Turner Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA
2015 Only by Analogy, East and Peggy Phelps Galleries, Claremont Graduate University, Claremont, CA
2013 &again&again, Chicago Art Department, Chicago, IL
On the Precipice, Zhou B Art Center, Chicago, IL
COLLECTIONS
HAIR + NAILS Gallery collection
Minnesota Historical Society
Minnesota Museum of American Art (pending completed commission)
Walker Art Center
LECTURES AND ARTIST TALKS
2023 Panel: 2021-22 MCAD-Jerome Fellows Panel Discussion, Minneapolis MN
2022 Artist Talk: MCBA/Jerome Book Arts Residency XVI, Minnesota Center for Book Arts
2021 Minneapolis Walking Tour of the Sites of Fascism, for Art Mob, Weisman Art Museum
2020 Panel: How Will We Know Fascism When We See It? With Caroline Sinders and Christopher Lehman, Weisman Art Museum
Artist Talk: The Aesthetics of Fascism, Weisman Art Museum, in conjunction with Legends and Myths of Ancient Minnesota
Artist Talk, St. Cloud State University, in conjunction with Uncanny Familiarities of Scenes and People
2017 “Visiting Artist Lecture: Brooks and Tamara Turner,” in conjunction with “Terrestrial Outlines,” College of the Redwoods, Eureka, CA
2015 “Explorations in Cosmic Materialism,” in conjunction with the launch of Graphite Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA
PUBLICATIONS AS AUTHOR
Books
A Guide to Charles Ray Sleeping Mime (Los Angeles: Paperleaf press, 2017).
Black Hole in Process: Cygnus X-1 (Los Angeles: Self Published and distributed during MFA 2015, 2014).
Black Hole in Process: Perseus (Chicago: Self published and distributed by the Ryan Education Center at the Art Institute of Chicago, 2013).
Essays
“Pedagogy and Propaganda: A Manifesto for Anti-Fascist Education.” MnArtists, Walker Art Center (2023).
“Gregory Rick: The Aesthetics of Violence for Social Liberation,” monograph, Headlands Center for the Arts (2023)
“The Synaptic Forest: Kim Benson’s Long Sweet Gone,” H+N Zine 38 (2022)
“Technolust 3000: A Lexicon for the 2020s,” H+N Zine 36 (2022)
“Field Moves and Peripheries Bridged,” H+N Zine 34 (2022)
“Images, Orgasms, and Edges: Ryan Fontaine’s A Pale and Simple Light,” H+N Zine 30 (2022).
“Candice Lin: Seeping, Rotting, Resting, Weeping,” Art Papers, December, 2021,
“New History Painting: Greg Rick’s The Dancing Plague,” H+N Zine 28 (2021)
“Ghosts in the Archive: Jonathan Herrera Soto at Hair and Nails,” H+N Zine 27 (2021)
“The Sublimation of the Mound: Lamia Abukhadra’s The Shape of Thin Air,” H+N Zine 27 (2021)
“Alexa Horochowski: Nomeacuerdo (I-don’t-remember-land),” Art Papers, March 24th, 2021,
“American Fascism as an Aesthetic Experience,” MN Artists, Walker Art Center, January 26th, 2021,
“Some Thoughts on Perception, Illusion, and Knots,” H+N Zine 26 (2021).
“Topographies of Vision and History: Kim Benson’s Hell Daisy in Relief,” H+N Zine 25 (2020).
“Reversing Reversals: Scenes and Results,” H+N Zine 23 (2020).
“Some Thoughts on the Poetics of Home,” TEMP/reviews, TEMP/MPLS, May 21st, 2020,
“Matter, Mind, Death, and Time,” TEMP/reviews, TEMP/MPLS, February 16th, 2020,
“Non-Verbal Incantations,” TEMP/reviews, TEMP/MPLS, February 16th, 2020,
“Alienation and Self Portraiture in Personal Record and Interpolation,” H+N Zine 22 (2020)
“Back to the Future Future,” H+N Zine 21 (2020)
“Unknown Function: Questioning the Art Object through Liquidation and Estuary,” H+N Zine 20 (2019)
“Physicality, Theatricality, and Embodiment in Soft/Hard Surface/Sound,” H+N Zine 19 (2019)
“Seeing and Reseeing: Jealousy at Hair and Nails,” H+N Zine 18 (2019)
“The Body, Labor, and History in Catherine Sullivan’s The Startled Faction,” H+N Zine 17 (2019)
“Permeable Bodies in ‘ardcore, a thing like you and me,” H+N Zine 17 (2019)
“Molds, Supports, and Surfaces in Lost and Found,” H+N Zine 17 (2019)
“In Brilliant Color: Some Thoughts on the Pedagogical Relationship Between Screen Time and Self Love,” H+N Zine 16 (2019)
“Unreally Real: On Ryan Fontaine’s The Utmost Natural,” H+N Zine 15 (2019)
“Notes on an Installation: Crater of a Home, Corner of a Mind,” New German Review 27 (2016).
“Selections from ‘Black Hole in Process: Cygnus X-1,’” Graphite Interdisciplinary Journal of the Arts 6 (2015).
PUBLICATIONS AS SUBJECT
William Hernandez Luege, “Historical Fabric,” for Pedagogy and Propaganda, 9/21/23
Brandon Schorsch, “Farmer Labor Forever,” for Pedagogy and Propaganda, 9/21/23
Sheila Regan, “Weekend Picks” MinnPost, 9/21/23
Adam Golfer, video interview for Perlman Teaching Museum, 9/20/23
Yuanrong Li, “History is Fabrication,” interview MNArtists, Walker Art Center, 5/19/22
Lois Thielin, “How American Fascism Inspired the Holocaust,” St. Cloud Times, 1/4/21
Alicia Eler, “Artist Digs into Minnesota’s Forgotten History of Fascism,” Star Tribune, 11/15/20
Jeff Carmack, “The Untold Story of the History of Fascism in Minnesota as an Art Exhibit by Brooks Turner,” Interview for The Untold History of Minnesota podcast, aired on KVSC, 10/20/20
Frankie Carlson, “In Precarious Times, Jewish Arts Council Continues Funding,” The Minnesota Daily, 9/16/2020.
OTHER ENGAGEMENTS
Member of the Organizing Committee for Remember 1934, 90th anniversary of the 1934 Teamster Strike