Steffani Jemison is an artist in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been featured in solo exhibitions, screenings, and performances at JOAN Los Angeles, Greene Naftali, Annet Gelink, Mass MoCA, Jeu de Paume, CAPC Bordeaux, the Museum of Modern Art, LAXART, Lincoln Center, and the Gene Siskel Film Center, among others.
Significant recent group exhibitions include A Movement In Every Direction: Legacies of the Great Migration (2022-2024), the Counterpublic Triennial (2023), Greater New York 2021, and the Whitney Biennial 2019. Other group exhibitions include presentations at the Brooklyn Museum, the Stedelijk Museum, The Drawing Center, The Guggenheim Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia, the Institute of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, the California African American Museum, and many other institutions. Jemison’s work is part of many permanent public collections, including the Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, Kadist, and the Stedelijk Museum.
Jemison’s work has been supported by a Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital Award, a Radcliffe Fellowship, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, a Tiffany Foundation Fellowship, and many other grants and awards. Artist residencies include the Studio Museum in Harlem AIR, the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program, Project Row Houses, the Museum of Fine Arts Houston CORE Program, the International Studio and Curatorial Program, and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.
Jemison was born in Berkeley, California. A graduate of Columbia University (BA) and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA), she is an Associate Professor of Art & Design at Rutgers University.
Jemison is the author of A Rock, A River, A Street (Primary Information, 2022), a novella. Her essays have been published in Artforum and The Brooklyn Rail. Her publishing project, Future Plan and Program, published books by Harold Mendez, Martine Syms, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Jina Valentine, and Szu-Han Ho.
With Quincy Flowers, she co-founded at Louis Place, a platform for writers. Jemison’s collaboration with Jamal Cyrus, Alpha’s Bet Is Not Over Yet, debuted at the New Museum in 2011. In collaboration with Justin Hicks,
Jemison has presented installations and performances at CCA Berlin, CAC Cincinnati, Nottingham Contemporary, the Western Front, Mass MoCA, festival steirischer herbst, and the Albertinum, Dresden. Hicks and Jemison’s work as Mikrokosmos has been supported by MAP Fund and other awards.