Julie Nagle

Julie Ann Nagle is an “unarcheologist,” creating and accumulating layers of narrative for viewers to disassemble. Her process has two parts: Field Work and Poetic Output. She may research for months before constructing installations for the viewer to explore through interaction. They must engage with her installations as if the experience itself was “field work” for them in the gallery - playing the role of investigator when approaching her projects, to fully engage. The concept of history is prevalent in her work; marginalized, hypothetical, personal, or alternative histories challenge the viewer to reimagine the linear, patriarchal and monolithic narratives we have inherited in order to better understand our current condition. Nagle’s work engages with history the way a time-traveler engages with paradox. Her practice defies singularity the way a wormhole defies gravity, and if it were possible to create a burrow somewhere in the space-time continuum, that is exactly where her projects would live.

After receiving her BFA at The Cooper Union School of Art she completed her MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media at Virginia Commonwealth University. This winter Nagle had a solo exhibition, “At Daybreak,” at McLanahan Gallery in the Misciagna Family Center for Performing Arts, Penn State University, Altoona, PA. She has exhibited in group exhibitions at Abrons Art Center, New York, NY; Franconia Sculpture Park, Franconia, MN; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; the RISD Museum, Providence, RI; A.I.R. Gallery, Brooklyn, NY; BRIC ArtsMedia, Brooklyn, NY; and Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY; among others. Additionally, she has been awarded over a dozen grants including a Jerome Foundation Fellowship and a National Academies Keck Futures Initiatives (NAKFI) grant subaward for her collaborative work with scientists. The many residencies she has participated in include the Museum of Fine Arts Houston Core Program, Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Seven Below, Sculpture Space, Gallery Aferro, Abrons Art Center, and the International Studio and Curatorial Program. Nagle is currently an Artist in Residence at Swale House on Governor’s Island, from June 1, 2019 through Fall 2020.