Artist Grace Weaver: "I'm drawing in painting."

”Desire is involved in what I'm doing.”

We visited American painter Grace Weaver in her studio near Berlin and found an artist in an intense dialogue with and exploration of the female body.

“I think it's fascinating that if you go all the way back to the very beginning of art history, like the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic, they're female figurines. That's like the first artwork that we have. And it's also totally fascinating that we don't fully understand what these things were. You could call them, and people do call them fertility goddesses, fertility sculptures, this kind of thing. But we do know that for most of human history, we've made female figures. There are very few early male figures from those times, so when I make a figure in my work, I feel like I have this chance in my own small way to connect with this amazing entire history of art.”

”I should say that the woman in the paintings is not me; she is also not a portrait of a real individual. Rather, she is an archetypal “woman” or “girl” […]. She is a fusion of my own perceived appearance and felt bodily experience with the outward appearances and imagined bodily experiences of countless other women – encountered both corporeally and in the image-world – all fused together in the hybridising mirror of my own imagination. Perhaps my inner world is like a graveyard of cast-off parts: limbs and torsos, faces and hands and feet, all culled from disparate sources, ready to be assembled golem-like into a new autonomous being.”

In her paintings, drawings, and sculptures, Grace Weaver (b. 1989) pushes the boundaries of the human form. In her recent works, the artist turns to archetypal motifs, including the mother and child, and the female nude. For Weaver, the body is not just a subject but a site – a stage on which line is choreographed in lyrical gestures, and through which emotion comes to the fore. Her compositions are made with a consciousness of the procedure of painting itself: whether in watercolour, oil or acrylic, she develops a unique choreography of chroma and brushwork, resulting in works that disclose an all-over, wet-into-wet, coming together of the surface.

“The painting always has this paradox of making eternal something totally temporary. To me, that's a kind of rare thing in the world besides maybe photography. There are so many things in the world now that are made through a process of laborious editing, or things that are made by committee in some kind of way. And I think that painting has this very special ability to freeze one feeling and one very discreet amount of time forever. And I think because it's in contrast to all of these other things, I think that's totally important.”

Grace Weaver (b. 1989, Vermont) lives and works in New York and Berlin. Solo exhibitions of the artist’s work have been held in international institutions, including Yuz Museum, Shanghai; Neues Museum Nürnberg (both 2023–2024); Oldenburger Kunstverein; Kunstpalais Erlangen (both 2019); Kunstverein Reutlingen (2017); and Dakshina Chitra, Chennai (2012). Weaver’s work has also been exhibited in group exhibitions including Oldenburger Kunstverein (2025); Yuz Museum, Shanghai (2023); Braunsfelder, Cologne; Wilhelm Hallen, Berlin; Miettinen Collection, Berlin; Neue Galerie, Gladbeck; Villa Merkel, Esslingen (all 2022); Kunstmuseum Ravensburg (2021); Galerie Wedding, Berlin (2018); ARoS Aarhus Art Museum (2016); University of Georgia (2015); Burlington City Arts (2013); Flynn Center for the Performing Arts, Burlington (2012); Colburn Gallery, University of Vermont, Burlington (2011); and Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne (2010).

Weaver’s works are in the collections of ARoS Aarhus Art Museum; Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk; Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington; Frac des Pays de la Loire, Carquefou; K&L Museum, Gwacheon; Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf; Columbus Museum of Art at The Pizzuti; Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf; Yuz Museum, Shanghai; 8smička Collection, Humpolec; and Zabludowicz Collection, London, among others.

Grace Weaver was interviewed by Marc-Christoph Wagner in her studio in Rangsdorf near Berlin. The recording took place in May 2025.

Camera: Olivia Newport
Edited by: Jarl Kaldan Therkelsen
Produced by: Marc-Christoph Wagner
Copyright: Louisiana Channel, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2025

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