Born in Minneapolis, Laura Swanson received her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2011 and BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2008. Her first solo exhibition was presented at the Laurie M. Tisch Gallery in New York in 2016. Her work has also been exhibited at the RISD Museum of Art, Camera Club of New York, and San Francisco Arts Commission Gallery, and internationally at Arsenal in Berlin, Germany, Galeria Art New Media in Warsaw, Poland, and in South Korea at the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art.
In 2017, she presented her first international solo exhibition at the Attenborough Arts Centre in Leicester, United Kingdom and debuted her first public art work at Socrates Sculpture Park in Long Island City, New York. Her self-portrait work is featured in and on the cover of Anti-Portraiture: Challenging the Limits of the Portrait, which was published by Bloomsbury in January 2021.
Swanson was a National Endowment for the Arts John Renna Scholar in 2008–2010, Jacob K. Javits Fellow in 2010–2011, and received a Wynn Newhouse Award from the Samuel I. Newhouse Foundation in 2013. Her work is held in collection at the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom and the Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art in Jeju, South Korea.
In 2022, she retired from her art practice to open Swanson Kuball, an art gallery in Long Island City, New York.
Contact: laura@lauraswanson.com