Carrie Yamaoka
seeing is forgetting and remembering and forgetting again, a solo exhibition by Carrie Yamaoka '79, explored memory’s effect on visual perception through works spanning drawing, painting, photography, and sculpture. Marking her return to the Zilkha Gallery, Yamaoka used rubbings, analog projections, and reconfigured past works to surface traces of time, place, and material history.
During a series of site visits in the summer of 2022, Yamaoka worked closely with the Zilkha Gallery itself as both subject and material. She created rubbings of the gallery walls on mylar and photographed within the space, later presenting slides of these images through an analog projector and onto mylar as part of a layered installation. These processes recorded the accumulation of invisible marks and gestures embedded in the walls over time.
The residency also included the reconfiguration of earlier works, as Yamaoka separated, altered, and recomposed materials to create new pieces that retained traces of their prior states—extending her ongoing exploration of memory, surface, and transformation.
About Carrie Yamaoka
Carrie Yamaoka (b. 1957, Glen Cove; lives and works in New York) received a BA from Wesleyan University (1979) and attended the Tyler School of Art, Rome (1977-78). Yamaoka is a founding member of the queer art collective fierce pussy.
Selected solo exhibitions have been held at Anonymous Gallery, New York (2025); Ulterior Gallery, New York (2024, 2019); Kiang Malingue, Hong Kong (2024); Zilkha Gallery, Wesleyan University, Middletown (2023); Commonwealth and Council, Los Angeles (2023, 2020); Henry Art Gallery, Seattle (2019); and Lucien Terras, New York (2017). Selected group exhibitions have been held at Participant Inc., New York (2025); Dallas Museum of Art (2024); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2023); i8 Gallery, Reykjavik (2021); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2020); Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2019); Transmitter, New York (2019); Albertz Benda, New York (2019); Kunstverein Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin (2019); Columbus College of Art and Design (2018); Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, New York (2018, 2017); Fondation Ricard, Paris (2018); Galerie Crevecoeur, Marseille (2018); Center for Contemporary Art Futura, Prague (2016); and MoMA PS1, Queens (2015). Yamaoka is a recipient of Maria Lassnig Prize (2025); John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2019), Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2017), Rutgers Center for Innovative Printmaking Fellowship (1990), and Art Matters Foundation Grant (1988). Yamaoka has participated in residencies at Painting Space 122, New York (2009); Fenenin El-Rahhal, White Desert (2006); Braziers International Artists Workshop, Oxfordshire (1998, 1995); and Yaddo, Saratoga Springs (1986).
Yamaoka’s work is in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago; Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Dallas Museum of Art; Henry Art Gallery, Seattle; Leslie Lohman Museum of Art, New York; Pizzuti Collection, Columbus; Sunpride Foundation, Hong Kong; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
Carrie Yamaoka Artist Talk
Watch a conversation between Carrie Yamaoka and Associate Professor of Art History Claire Grace
