igagarin@mcad.edu
http://www.isagagarin.com
she/her/hers

BIO 

Isa Gagarin is a visual artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Educated in painting, Gagarin’s practice is focused on site-specific installation. Working with varied materials such as earth pigment, colored tissue paper and transparent silk, she creates environments that respond to the formal and spatial qualities of galleries and unconventional sites. Gagarin was born in Guam and raised in Hawai’i. She received her BFA in Painting from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2008, and earned an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2018.

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY & MENTORSHIP

I enter conversations with students with an interest in developing a mutual understanding of their artistic process, including how they conceive ideas, experiment with materials and develop work for audiences. Teaching from the position of a peer artist, I challenge students to consider how their process of thinking and making–which for artists, is often intertwined–is shared with the world. The focus of my work is in site-specific installation, a background that I share with my students by helping them to consider the context of their work, whether formal or social-political. I practice teaching within an intersectional feminist framework, and make a conscious effort to introduce students to diverse and/or marginalized artistic practices and discourse.