M. Carmen Lane is a two:spirit African-American and Haudenosaunee (Mohawk/Tuscarora) artist, writer and facilitator living in Cleveland, Ohio. Lane’s work ranges from experiential educator to diversity practitioner to organizational systems consultant to experimental artist—all of it integrates ancestry, legacy, and spirituality; pursues expansion, experimentation, and play. Lane is founder and director of ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership, an urban retreat center and social practice experiment in holistic health, leadership development, Indigenous arts and culture and the Akhsótha Gallery located in the historic Buckeye-Shaker neighborhood. Lane’s work has been published in numerous journals and anthologies including the Yellow Medicine Review, Red Ink Magazine, Anomaly, and the Lambda Literary Award-nominated Sovereign Erotics: A Collection of Two Spirit Literatures. Lane’s first collection of poetry is Calling Out After Slaughter (2015). Lane has exhibited work during the FRONT 2018 triennial group show A Color Removed at SPACES Gallery, EFA Project Space’s Spring 2019 exhibition In The Presence of Absence, The Riffe Gallery’s SHIFT exhibition and the group exhibition CONVERGE at the Artist Archives of the Western Reserve. Lane was a 2018 Creative Fusion artist-in-residence; a recipient of the 2019 Room In The House artist residency at the historic Karamu theatre and a 2020 artist-in-residence at the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University. In 2020, Lane was awarded a Joyce Award with ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership.
Lane attended Earlham College receiving their BA in Women’s Studies with a focus in feminist art history, theory & criticism and later earned their MS in Organization Development & Change from American University. Lane was a recipient of both the AU/NTL Segal-Seashore Fellowship and Hal Kellner Award. Lane is an Amanda Fouther scholar/member of NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science and Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers. In 2016, they became a birth/postpartum and end-of-life doula. In 2022, they were an artist-in-residence at the Everglades National Park as the recipient of the inaugural Indigenous Artist Fellowship and Artist2Artist Fellow through the Art Matters Foundation.
IG: m_carmenlane
Carmen is available for: public talks; commissioned works (e.g. public art, altar design + activation, portrait photography); visiting artist/lecturer positions; independent/collaborative curatorial projects; art writing/guest editor interventions; consultation (e.g. equity leadership for organizations + senior leaders)
Artist Talk, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr. + M. Carmen Lane in conversation, InTheory, InPractice (How Trans Is You?), ATNSC/Cleveland Museum of Art, June 5th, 2024
Curator, Amos Paul Kennedy, Jr., PRINTING THE TRUTH (How Trans Is You?), Akhsotha Gallery, June 6th thru August 8th
Artist Talk, October 12th, 2023 Weston Gallery (Cincinnati)
Solo Exhibition, M. Carmen Lane, When You Visit Other Camps, October 6th thru November 17th, 2023, Cleveland Print Room
Curator, Amber N. Ford, UNTITLED (I Really Just Made This Work So I Could Heal), Akhsotha Gallery, October 5th thru November 16th, 2023
Solo Exhibition, M. Carmen Lane,In This House (We Forgot About The Cycle of Things), September 16, 2023 Weston Gallery (Cincinnati)
Panelist/Exhibiting Artist, Bodies Under Siege: A Conversation, with Alexis McGill Johnson, Tarana Burke and Rashida Bumbray, Planned Parenthood (Bridgehampton), September 2, 2023
Keynote, “Organizing The New World: Place Reclamation, Unfinished Business + Socially Engaged Art,” April 4th, 2023 6:30pm EST West Chester University
Panelist, “Sovereignty is in The Body,” Indigeneity and Reproductive Justice, University of Illinois (Chicago), March 15, 2023 2pm CENTRAL
Group Exhibition, PASSAGES, Nest Gallery/Everglades National Park, January 28, 2023
Panelist, Undoing and Remaking Collective Memory, with Renee Ater and Michelle Browder, Keithley Symposium/Cleveland Museum of Art, December 15, 2022
Solo Exhibition, M. Carmen Lane MIGRATIONS (My Great-Grandmother Was A Republican), Farmer Family Gallery/Ohio State University (Lima), October 27th thru December 8th, 2022
Curator, Donald Black, Jr., ENKINDLED, Akhsotha Gallery, October 7th thru November 11th, 2022
Speaker, The Unhealed Wound: Unfinished Business and the Artist-Run Space, Juneteenth Institute/THE SPACE FOR CREATIVE BLACK IMAGINATION June 16th, 2022
Panelist, Post-Pandemic Landscapes, Futures Symposium: Artist Run Spaces (Dayton, Ohio), May 28th, 2022
Group Exhibition, Artist Run Spaces, Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati), May 27th, 2022 thru September 11, 2022
M. Carmen Lane, Sondra Perry, Kendra Sullivan. The Years They've Taken: Systemic Oppression, Black Bodies, and the Materiality of Grief. WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly; The Feminist Press. Volume 50, Numbers 1 & 2, Spring/Summer 2022, pp. 211-226
Curator, Shaun Leonardo: Overlooked Intimacies, Akhsotha Gallery, April 7th, 2022 thru May 5th 2022
Moderator, Born Into This, Interconnectivity (on cross-organization collaboration), September 25th, 2021
Group Exhibition, CONVERGE, Artist Archives of the Western Reserve, August 26th thru October 16th, 2021
Artist Talk, Compound Effigy, Riffe Gallery, August 11, 2021
Group Exhibition, SHIFT: Thinking Globally, Acting Locally, Riffe Gallery, Columbus, July 31 thru October 9, 2021
Visiting Artist Course: Sacred Arts of Vodou and Santeria(Matthew Rarey) Oberlin College, July 8, 2021
Panelist, Confronting Colonialism Event 2: Two-Spirit & Queer Haudenosaunee Intersections and Resurgence, The New School, May 18, 2021
Panelist, Care In A Time Of Its Rationing, Sculpture Center NY, May 27, 2021
Visiting Artist Course: Spectral Spaces (Sondra Perry) Rutgers University, April 3, 2021
Visiting Artist Course: Social Practice (Nanette Yanuzzi), Oberlin College, March 24, 2021
Moderator, InSession 3: Artist Residencies Mass MoCa March 18, 2021
Walk In My Mocs Writers Series: M. Carmen Lane, Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College, March 4, 2021
Moderator, InSession with Nick Cave, Shaun Leonardo, Steve Locke, Xaviera Simmons, M. Carmen Lane, and Dr. Kalima Young, Mass MoCa December 10, 2020 https://massmoca.org/event/in-session/
Dean, Virtual Human Interaction Lab, December 4th thru December 11th, 2020, NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science https://www.ntl.org/human-interaction
The Years They’ve Taken: Systemic Oppression, Black Bodies & the Materiality of Grief A public dialogue between artists Sondra Perry & M. Carmen Lane 10.1.20 with ATNSC: Center for Healing & Creative Leadership and EFA Project Space
Visiting Artist Course: Spectral Spaces (Sondra Perry) Yale University November 4, 2020
Artist Talk/Lecture, Unfinished (We Are What’s Left Undone): Identity, Performative Racial Scripts & the Necessity of the Anti-Colonial Iconoclast University of Kansas October 29, 2020
Trainer, Virtual Human Interaction Lab, October 23rd thru November 1st, 2020, NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Science https://www.ntl.org/human-interaction
Ellen Johnson Visiting Artist, Oberlin College, October 1, 2020
Moderator/Workshop Facilitator,Born Into This September 16-28, 2020
Digital Artist Talk, STASIS: Exploring Cultural Production In The Midst of Change/What Is The Work of the Artist? Praxis Fiber Workshop Gallery & ATNSC: Center for Healing and Creative Leadership 4.15.20
POSTPONED Artist/Writer in Residence, Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College/Delta College/Saginaw Valley State University 3.31.20
POSTPONED Moderator, Challenging a Self-Evident Truth: Intersex and the Sex and Gender Binary, Cleveland Humanities Festival/Case Western Reserve University 3.26.20
Ritualizing Resistance: Paris Is Burning, Candomblé & Alternative Spaces of Blackness, a speculative public musing on the kinship between Black/Latinx house ballroom communities within North America and the Afro-Brazilian religion Candomblé, Wondershop 2019
Artists on Art: M. Carmen Lane on Sondra Perry, A Terrible Thing, Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland 2019
Spirit As Materiality: Nurturing An Ancestor Based Creative Practice, Artist-in-Residence Workshop/Artist Talk, Karamu House 2019
Material Memory: The Altar As Archive, Artist Talk/Studio Visit (with Cleveland Museum of Art 2019 DAMLI Fellows) Karamu House, 2019
KARAMU AWARDS VISUAL AND PERFORMING ARTS RESIDENCIES, Press Release June 3, 2019
Skin Hunger/The Artist As Caregiver, In The Presence of Absence EFA Project Space end_notes 1, 2019
