About Alanna Austin

BIO

Alanna Austin is a printmaker and multimedia artist and a assistant professor of studio arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts where she serves as the head of printmaking. Austin is the founder of the Western Wilds Collective that acts as a conference for artists to come together on a digital platform once every other year to discuss work and innovative techniques. Alanna Austin currently serves as the current co-editor of the Mid America Print Council journal.

Austins work stems from research on expression of mind and memory united with color, pattern, and material from her Hispanic, Greek, and Turkish heritage. Through installations and printmaking, her work depicts elements of personal narrative tied to nostalgia, techniques passed on generationally, and generational trauma. Austin has been displayed internationally, with a most recent exhibition in Inverloch, Australia. Through the United States, Austins work has been showed and stored in collections with recent exhibitions in Florida, Texas, Washington and Ohio. Austins work is in archives spanning the United States such as Wichita Falls Museum of Art, the University of Idaho special collections, Matrix Press in Montana, the Bernard Zuckerman Museum of Art in Georgia, the University of Wyoming Special Collections and more.

ARTIST STATEMENT

I explore systems of behavior, value, and survival. My practice is rooted in research and observation, often beginning with the natural world and extending into social, cultural, and emotional structures. I am particularly interested in how identity and gender are shaped by expectation and how certain bodies are encouraged toward productivity, care, and visibility, while others are permitted rest, refusal, or ambiguity.

Much of my work examines feminine-coded labor and the quiet pressures attached to it: to be useful, accommodating, and aesthetically pleasing. I am drawn to subjects and processes that resist these ideals, using repetition, absence, and interruption as ways to question what is considered successful or complete. My work appears as symbolic tools rather than fixed subjects, allowing me to explore ideas of adaptation, deviation, and survival outside of normative roles.

Printmaking is central to my practice because it embodies both control and surrender. The process relies on structure, registration, and repetition, yet inevitably reveals flaws and slippages. I embrace these moments as evidence of the body’s presence and the limits of perfection, particularly in relation to gendered expectations of refinement and consistency.

My work seeks to create space for complexity within identity. By foregrounding ambiguity and resisting resolution, I invite viewers to reflect on how femininity, labor, and value are constructed—and how alternative ways of being might exist within, alongside, or in quiet opposition to these systems.