Grace Rosario Perkins

Grace Rosario Perkins (b. 1986) is a multidisciplinary artist whose works explore her the intersections of her Native American, queer and gender identities.

She currently lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

Although she is primarily a painter, Perkins also creates in other mediums, including video installations and masks.

Perkins has been nominated for a San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA) Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art Award, a United States Arts Fellowship, a Tosa Studio Award, and a Liquitex Painter’s Residency.

As well as her solo work, Perkins is a member of the Black Salt Collective.

Perkins was born in Santa Fe, New Mexico, in 1986.

Her mother is Navajo and her father is Pima, or Diné/Akimel O’odham.

Perkins was raised in Oakland, around the Gila River, and in the Navajo Nation.

Perkins received her General Education Development (GED) certificate before studying Art History at Mills College at Northeastern University, in Oakland.

There was a comic book store beside Perkins’s high school, and she was inspired by the books she read there to make art for herself.

Several members of Perkins’s family are artists themselves, including her father, Olen Perkins, and her uncle, Michael McCabe.

McCabe runs the Santa Fe printmaking shop, Fourth Dimension Studios.

Perkins credits McCabe with introducing her to lithography.

McCabe also introduced Perkins to Salish artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Southern Cheynne artist Edgar Heap of Birds.

Perkins’s current artistic practice is heavily influenced by the Native American artists who came before her and by her own Diné/Akimel O’odham ancestry.

Vision (2013) is the first mask that Perkins ever made.

This mask has the word "Vision" carved into the forehead.

According to Perkins, the mask speaks to the importance of visions in Native American cultures.

Perkins worked at a series of non-profit organizations for disabled artists, like the NIAD Art Centre, around the same time as she was studying at Mills College.

Perkins is quoted as saying, "‘That's kind of where I got away from the preciousness of making and its product and started focusing more on the process and experimentation.’" Since that time, Perkins has also taught at her alma mater, Mills College.

Additionally, Perkins has presented on a number of panels, both on her own and as a member of the Black Salt Collective.

In a 2017 interview for ''Nat.

Brut'', Perkins explained that her paintings are inspired by her grandmother’s experience growing up in a hogan and at boarding schools.

Additionally, Perkins includes Navajo (or Diné) in her works, like in Cheii Knew We Were in the White World, a painting from 2022.

Cheii is the Navajo word for "grandpa".

About the incorporation of Navajo in her work, Perkins has said that non-Native American people are "unwilling ‘to go deeper to get it.’" Perkins’s work continues to explore access to and preservation of Native American languages.

Perkins works from a do-it-yourself (DIY) approach.

As she puts it, "‘a lot of my work is really thrown together. I work with really crude materials... pretty much just anything that I can get my hands on that's inexpensive and accessible.’" Out of this DIY approach comes Perkins’s signature masks, made out of papier-mâche and chicken-wire.

In 2017, Perkins was invited to be a part of a conference called, "CROSSROADS: ART + NATIVE FEMINISMS", at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD) in New York City.

Perkins’s panel was titled, "The Problematics of Making Art While Native and Female."

In 2017, Perkins was granted an artist’s residency at Artists’ Cooperative Residency & Exhibitions (ACRE), which is designed specifically for new and emerging artists.

Perkins has also been in residence at White Leaves, the Sedona Summer Colony, and Varda Artists’ Residency.

Additionally, from 2018 to 2019, Perkins was the Print Public Artist-in-Residence at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California.

The residency is focused on the role of public art in city planning.

As a part of this residency, Perkins produced Sight Sound (2019), an acrylic and spray paint work that is currently housed at the Kala Art Institute.

Perkins and her father, Olen Perkins, collaborated on 20 paintings for their exhibit, Thin Leather.

Their collaborative practice was as follows: Perkins mailed her father an artwork, he added to the canvas, sent it back, and the process continued until they decided the painting was finished.

This exhibit was named after Olen’s grandfather, and Grace Rosario’s great-grandfather, Thin Leather.

Perkins’s work was exhibited as part of the Material Futurity group show at the Law Warschaw Gallery at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Running Towards the Sun, an acrylic and spray paint piece, was exhibited as part of Let’s talk about sex, bb at The Agnes Etherington Art Centre at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario.