Vadis Turner

VADIS TURNER'S (b. 1977, Nashville, TN) textile-driven sculptures and mixed media works challenge narratives traditionally imposed upon female archetypes. Growing up in the conservative landscape of the American South, the artist was raised among generations of women navigating a culture wrought with behavioral expectations. In her practice, Turner considers those experiences in the broader context of women’s history, employing domestic materials liberated from their intended functions, formal natures, and gender associations to rewrite the tale. Ribbons, bedsheets, and curtains coupled with concrete, steel, and ash take shape in misbehaving grids, unruly vessels, and mercurial braided structures, often titled after maligned female figures from classical folklore and mythology.

The work of Vadis Turner was aptly characterized in an essay by Melissa Messina as harkening “to the visceral and conceptual qualities of art made in the area in late the 1960s and early ‘70s….  In her visceral and conceptual use of materials, and her embrace of the decorative, the romantic, and the bodily, Turner is clearly the daughter of this very rebellious revolution.”

Turner’s works has been featured widely at museums and institutions including solo shows at The Huntsville Museum of Art, the Frist Art Museum, Abroms-Engel Institute for Visual Arts, and University of Colorado Colorado Springs and group shows at the Museum of Art and Design, Zuckerman Museum, KMAC, and 21C, among others.

Included in ZieherSmith exhibitions: Quartet, 2022; ZieherSmith & Friends, 2020; Summer Reading, 2015; BNA, 2011