Isa Gagarin

Isa Gagarin (b. 1986, Guam, USA) is a visual artist raised in Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi and based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose work focuses on site-responsive installation and mixed media works on paper. In her works on paper, Gagarin uses textured surfaces and collaged shapes to create compositions that allude to natural forms such as dappled light, oceanic waves, tidal movements and the moon. Her installations explore similar themes while responding to the unique characteristics of light and architecture on site, generating questions about the legacies that inform one’s orientation to the environment. Gagarin’s work raises these questions in relation to her experience of being raised in Hawaiʻi (with ancestral lineages in Guam and the Philippines), and her interest in the contemporary resurgence of indigenous ocean navigation practices throughout Micronesia and Polynesia. She received an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018, and earned her BFA in Painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2008.