Poem Johnson

POEM JOHNSON

Award-winning artist, filmmaker and educator

I am a poet, time-based and textile artist.
I combine materiality with the geopoetic.
I create speculative and critical fabulations.
I am enacting a tidalectic counter-historiography.
I future and ping-pong with time.

CONTACT

INSTAGRAM

NEWS 2026
- Museum acquires textile.
- Maritime Museum Paris curate works.
- Swedish art center curate solo exhibition.

PRESS REVIEWS

EDUCATION
2026 PhD, Stockholm University Arts, Sweden
2013 MArch, Paris-Malaquais, France
2011 MFA, Beaux-Arts de Paris, France
2009 BFA, Beaux-Arts de Paris, France

VISITING PROGRAMS
2012 China Academy of Art, Hangzhou
2010 Hunter College, CUNY, United States

SELECTED AWARDS & HONORS

2023
- Production Grant, Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation, Canada
- Artist Fellowship, French Ministry of Culture, DRAC, France

2019
- Mobility grant for artists, i-Portunus, Creative Europe, UK
-Screenwriting Grant, Île-de-France Region, Cinema Department, France

2018
- Artist Fellowship, French Ministry of Culture, DRAC, France
-Best Experimental Short Award, 10th Annual Milwaukee Film Festival, United States

2017
- Cornish Family Prize for Art & Design Publishing, National Gallery of Victoria, Australia
-Rooftop Filmmakers Fund Short Film Grant, Rooftop Film, United States
-Production Grant, CNC Dicréam, France

2016
- Best Short Film Award, International Film Festival de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain
-Production Grant, CNC Dicréam, France

2015
- 3rd Prize, experimental, Athens International Film + Video Festival (AIFVF), United States.

2009
-LVMH Young Artist Award, LVMH Foundation, France
-Jean-François et Marie-Laure de Clermont-Tonnerre Award, Amis des Beaux-Arts, France

SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2027
Upcoming...

2024
-Galerie Mitterrand, The Sea is History (After Derek Walcott), Paris, France

2017
- Manetti-Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, United States
-Center for Contemporary Art 3 CHA, Rite of Spring, Châteaugiron, France

2016
- La Maréchalerie - Center for Contemporary Art, fecund lacuna: art, archaeology, genetics, Versailles, France
-Werkleitz Gesellschaft e.V. - Zentrum für Medienkunst, Videorama, Germany

SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2026
-National Maritime Museum (Musée national de la Marine), Depths, Paris, France

-Museum of Ethnography, Bringing the Objects to Life: Challenging the Museum’s Colonial History, Stockholm, Sweden

2025
-Bromska palatset, Résidence de France, Palais Broms, Kulturnatt, Stockholm, Sweden

2024
-Liljevalchs Konsthall, The Stockholm Cosmology, Stockholm, Sweden

-Galerie Mitterrand, Art Paris Art Fair, Fragile Utopias, Paris, France

2022
-The Polygon Gallery, Ghosts of the Machine, Vancouver, Canada

2020
-Manifesta 13, Les Parallèles du Sud, Marseille, France

-Centre Pompidou, Chine-Afrique, Crossing the World Color Line, Paris, France

2019
Vancouver Biennale, Re-imagining Public Space, Vancouver, Canada

2018
-Sundance Film Festival, Short Film Program, Park City, United States

-6th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Abracadabra!, Moscow, Russia

-Melbourne International Film Festival, WTF Shorts, Victoria, Australia

-Museo de Arte Moderna, OLHO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2017
-Ginza Maison Hermès Le Forum, ATM tempo I/II/III, Tokyo, Japan

2016
-Sundance Film Festival, New Frontier program, Park City, United States

-Arc en rêve centre d’architecture, Constellation•s: New Ways of Living in the World, Bordeaux, France

-5th Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, Deep Inside, Moscow, Russia

2015
-Berlin International Film Festival, Berlinale Shorts, Berlin, Germany

-Centre National Edition Art Image - CNEAI, Trans(¿)duction, Chatou, France

2014
-Jeu de Paume (National Gallery for Contemporary Art), The Yvonne Rainer Project: From Choreography to Cinema, Paris, France

2010
-Pernod Ricard Foundation, Line of chance, Paris, France

SELECTED WORKS

Returns (The Sea is History), Cotton, merino wool and polyester woven together in a loom, 78.7 × 137.8 in (200 x 350 cm), 2024.

Collections
The Buschlen Mowatt Nichol Foundation (Canada)
Världskulturmuseet/Etnografiska museet (Sweden)

Exhibitions
Museum of Ethnography, Bringing the Objects to Life, Stockholm, Sweden, 2026.
National Maritime Museum (Musée national de la Marine), Depths, Paris, France, 2026.
Galerie Mitterrand, The Sea is History (After Derek Walcott), Paris, France, 2024.
Liljevalchs Konsthall, The Stockholm Cosmology, Stockholm, Sweden, 2024.

Description
Drawing on Caribbean poet Derek Walcott, my textile series “The Sea is History“ tells the story of the Middle Passage through figures where human bodies merge with coral, pearls, and oceanic matter. Developed through collage, drawing, and composition, each work is woven in cotton, wool, and polyester, translating archival and imaginative research into material form. Together, the works surface Afro-diasporic histories, rendering what the sea has long held submerged into the tactile, the sensual, and the colorful.

“THE SEA IS HISTORY” GALERIE MITTERRAND

Views of the exhibition “The Sea is History (After Derek Walcott),” Galerie Mitterrand, Paris, France, March 24, May 16 2024, Curated by Olivia Anani. Photographer: Axel Fried.

“YUYU” FILM

YúYú, Single-channel color video with 5.1 surround sound, 15 minutes, 2014 (excerpt).

Collection
The Kramlich Collection (United States)

Selected Exhibitions
The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, Davis, United States, 2017
Sundance Film Festival, Park City, United States, 2016
International Berlin Film Festival, Berlin, Germany, 2015
National Gallery of Jeu de Paume, Paris, France, 2014

Description
YúYú film figures Shé Zuŏ Bīn, a Chinese beekeeper who performs a traditional rite of spring in the Yangtze Valley, Chóngqìng. Landscape footage of an UNESCO world heritage site is set against the vast city that dominates the valley. In a ritual act, Shé Zuŏ Bīn allows queen bees to land on his body, summoning thousands of worker bees until his body is entirely covered. Standing still in a trance-like state, he surrenders completely to the bees. For a moment, what is dangerous becomes protective, and human and non-human life are held in fragile balance.

PARLEY: How would you feel about being denied the opportunity to speak your ancestral language? VANCOUVER BIENNALE

Parley is a multi-channel video installation, artist book, and photographic series investigating the politics of erasure and access in relation to Indigenous cultural heritage. Developed through a residency at the Vancouver Biennale, the project brought me into collaboration with three Vancouver museums and 26 First Nations artists, curators, and knowledge keepers. Working inside museum reserve collections, the work examines how ancestral knowledge is shared, withheld, or revived within colonial institutions re-imagining fieldwork as an artistic methodology, foregrounding the tensions between custodianship and sovereignty.

Parley: How would you feel about being denied the opportunity to speak your ancestral language, Multi-channel video installation, variable duration (loop), Commissioned by the Vancouver Biennale, 2019-2024.