“Ian Gerson’s work advances critical ideas about trans consciousness as a critical framework for identifying and understanding resistance, adaptability, and survival strategies that can be deployed in the pursuit of environmental justice.” – Juror Phillip A. Townsend, Curator of Art, Art Galleries at Black Studies (AGBS), The University of Texas at Austin.

Ian Gerson is the 2023 Horton Artadia Award recipient.

Ian Gerson is a queer and trans interdisciplinary artist and educator born and based in Houston, Ian has participated in several residencies including Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture, MacDowell, and Socrates Sculpture Park, and shared work across the US and in Mexico City, most recently at BOX13 in Houston and Galveston Artist Residency with an upcoming solo show at Art League Houston in 2023. Ian holds an MFA in Sculpture + Extended Media from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Texas at Austin.

Working at the intersections of sculpture, installation, and community engagement, Ian’s practice investigates climate injustices, trans consciousness, and queer longing. Stemming from personal encounters with (un)natural disasters and transitioning, Ian’s work asks how a trans experience, embodying adaptability and resilience, can be looked to as a model for surviving precarity. Ian weaves flimsy tapestries with discarded materials culled from local waterways and coastlines as a way of centering the refused, the invisible, the marginal.