Born: 1974, Oregon
Current Location: Los Angeles, California
Website / Portfolio: fawnrogers.com
Instagram: @fawnrogers
Biography
Making art was better than trying to learn how to communicate with words, and still is.
She has no formal education, barely finished high school, and is entirely self-taught. Her practice was built through trial and error.
From as young as she can remember, she had an awareness of the suffering humans create toward each other and all sentient life, and how painful that is. That awareness has remained a constant undercurrent in her work.
Her work is motivated by the conflict of human nature with each other and the unbuilt world.
Artistic Practice
She has always used a multitude of materials and cannot imagine being only a sculptor, only a painter, or only a video artist.
Her work moves through materials and forms, but is always rooted in tension between beauty and violence, intimacy and distance, desire and consequence. It can appear minimal or excessive, seductive or confrontational, but underneath it is direct. She is not interested in decoration or resolution. She is interested in contact, where something internal meets the external world and cannot be separated cleanly again.
The whole world is a crime scene and we are all personally involved. Her work considers the impact of humanity, and how it has become a force of nature that has effected change that can no longer be reversed.
Recurring elements include light, oysters, nails, pearl, teeth, dirt, sex, words, animals, mirror, hypocritical contradictions, dark humor at times, intimacy, and challenging convention and conviction.
Her influences include the decision to stay alive, materials, silence, 195 countries, a single blade of grass, the shell, all the artists’ works she has seen, and all the lovers she has had.
Notable Works & Exhibitions
2025 Mother Nature in the Bardo, New York, Group
2024 Everything is Sacred Nothing is Precious; Everything is Precious Nothing is Sacred, MAKE ROOM, California
2023 Come Ruin or Rapture, Galerie Marguo, France
2023 GODOG, Lauren Powell Projects, California
2023 My Body, My Business, Sotheby’s with Nadya Tolokonnikova / Pussy Riot, New York
2023 Burn, Gleam, Shine, Galerie Marguo / K11 Museum, Hong Kong
2022 Your Perfect Plastic Heart, Wilding Cran Gallery, California
2017 Violent Garden, The Lodge, California
If she had to choose one project, it would be “I Love You And That Makes Me God,” because it is very humbling.
The project began as an exploration of a violent experience she had with her mother when she was four years old. It started in 2012 and has taken many forms, including street art and evolving into a two-channel video installation with individuals from all walks of life around the world saying the expression. The text has also appeared in large public installations, painting, and sculpture. There is no right or wrong way to say the expression.
The expression is not religious. It is an exploration of conviction, power, and intimacy. The project exists as a coalescence of private and public dialogue, encountering the beliefs people live by, consciously or unconsciously, and how frequently they surface.
The work approaches the dichotomy between interpersonal and impersonal love. Its focus is identity, both individual and collective, and the space between isolation and connection. It is not concerned with categorizing love or God, but instead explores the proximity of identity to these ideas. Individual works cultivate dialogue around ritual, community, evolution of humanity, cosmology, social constructionism, sacred histories, ethics, vulnerability, and conviction.
The project has involved participants from around the world, including celebrities, homeless individuals, academics, sex workers, humanitarians, convicted criminals including pedophiles and victims, inventors, architects, service industry professionals, athletes, a Native American tribal chief, musicians, and twins. Each participant speaks the phrase with their own interpretation. She began filming individuals who have taken the lives of others saying the phrase and intends to continue working with that group.
In 2023, an iteration was shown at M+B Gallery in Los Angeles. That version consisted of a two-channel video with monitors encased in a large-scale sculpture made from plaster, soil, and red Ferrari car paint. Each iteration is edited independently.
Selected Exhibitions
• Mother Nature in the Bardo, New York, 2025
• Everything is Sacred Nothing is Precious; Everything is Precious Nothing is Sacred, MAKE ROOM, California, 2024
• Come Ruin or Rapture, Galerie Marguo, France, 2023
• GODOG, Lauren Powell Projects, California, 2023
• My Body, My Business, Sotheby’s with Nadya Tolokonnikova / Pussy Riot, New York, 2023
• Burn, Gleam, Shine, Galerie Marguo / K11 Museum, Hong Kong, 2023
• Your Perfect Plastic Heart, Wilding Cran Gallery, California, 2022
• Violent Garden, The Lodge, California, 2017
Links & Press
• Press: fawnrogers.com/press
• Founding member of Trusaic, a pay equity software company helping international organizations achieve equal pay
• Creator of “Epi,” a 3D gender-neutral figure derived from the word Epicene, featuring moving natural elements within a transparent form, presented on a 16-foot LED screen at a World at Work conference
In Her Words
“Is the stone warm from the sun. Do you feel it. Do you like it. Does it go all the way down through your body as you hold it.”
