Ellen Lesperance

Ellen Lesperance (b. 1971, Minneapolis, USA) lives and works in Portland, USA. She has exhibited widely in the United States and internationally. Solo exhibitions of her work include Stay in the Centre of No-Man’s Land, Hollybush Gardens, London (2024); The Land of the Feminye, Derek Eller Gallery, New York (2022); Amazonknights, Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami; Will There Be Womanly Times?, Hollybush Gardens, London, (both 2021); Together we lie in ditches and in front of machines, Derek Eller Gallery, New York; Ellen Lesperance: Velvet Fist, Baltimore Art Museum, Baltimore (both 2020); W.I.T.C.H. 1985, Portland Art Museum, Portland (2017); Run Now Women, XO, Project Room, Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris, France (2016); and Ellen Lesperance, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle (2010). 

She has participated in significant group exhibitions internationally, including the touring exhibition Woven Histories: Textiles and Modern Abstraction, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC (2024) and Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (2023); Social Fabric: Ellen Lesperance and Evelyn Roth, Ivory Tars, Glasgow (2024); Long Story Short, Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2023); Confessions of the Century, Broodthaers Society of America, New York, USA; Happy Mechanics, Hollybush Gardens, London; Staying with the Trouble, Tufts University Gallery, Somerville, USA; Active Threads, KAI 10 Arthena Foundation, Dusseldorf, Germany; Art on Paper 2021, Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, USA; The Slipstream: Reflection, Resilience, and Resistance in the Art of Our Time, Brooklyn Museum, New York, USA (all 2021); Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond, Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, New York, USA (2020); Less Is A Bore: Maximalist Art & Design, Institute for Contemporary Art, Boston, USA; Dress Codes: Ellen Lesperance and Diane Simpson, The Frye Art Museum, Seattle, USA; Feminist Histories: Artists After 2000, Museum of Art São Paolo, São Paulo, Brazil; Still I Rise: Feminisms, Gender, Resistance, traveling: Nottingham Contemporary, Nottingham, UK, De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill-on-Sea, UK; To Make Wrong / Right / Now, Honolulu Biennial, Honolulu (all 2019); New Materialism, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm, Sweden; Nashashibi/Skaer Thinking Through Other Artists, Tate St. Ives, Cornwall, UK (both 2018); and Trigger: Gender as a Tool and a Weapon, The New Museum, New York (2017). 

Her work is held is significant public collections including Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, MD; Brooklyn Museum, Brooklyn; Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse; FRAC Grand-Large, Dunkirk, France; ICA Miami, Miami; Minneapolis Institute of Art, Minneapolis; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia; Portland Art Museum, Portland; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.

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