Summer Wheat

The Future (and past) is Female: Summer Wheat’s whimsical, often tongue-in-cheek tableaux in rich jewel tones punctuated with bright neons, teem with fantastical figures that memorialize tribes of women hunting, collaborating, celebrating, and ultimately replacing millennia of images of male rulers and warriors.

Summer Wheat’s unique formative experiences with art growing up in Oklahoma were shaped by the aesthetic and conceptual drive of Native American art and Indigenous culture. Bridging those early influences with the canon of Western art (from ancient art to medieval tapestries) and popular references such as astrology and comic books, the artist’s work centers female archetypes in her expansive practice of painting, sculpture, and large-scale installation.

For the artist’s first monograph, curator Jennifer Sudul Edwards discusses the wide range of subjects that inform Wheat’s work, including the artist’s interest in alchemy. Curator Anne Ellegood in conversation with the artist discusses Wheat’s sculptural work, large-scale installations, and first foray into building a freestanding architectural space. Jennifer Krasinski explores Wheat’s unique approach to painting; her impressive wall works resemble a cross between intricate beadwork and the pixel-like structure of a digital image.