Mariah Robertson is a New York–based artist whose work engages material processes, image-making, and systems of production across installation, objects, and large-scale works. Much of this work has developed through sustained engagement with photographic process, particularly in the darkroom, which she uses as a site of improvisation and performance. Through chance, scale, and material limitation, the work tests the systems, rules, and assumptions embedded in photographic practice and, more broadly, in structures of value and authority.

Robertson has exhibited widely in the U.S. and internationally, with works held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the National Gallery of Art, among others. Beyond exhibitions, Robertson has co-founded two artist-run spaces and created The Free Art School, a podcast sharing lessons and dialogues for artists.

She has had solo exhibitions at Van Doren Waxter (New York), Green Gallery (Milwaukee), M+B (Los Angeles), Lora Reynolds (Austin), and the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (Gateshead, England). Her work has also been included in major group exhibitions at institutions such as the Museum of Modern Art and MoMA PS1 (New York), the International Center of Photography (New York), the National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington, DC, 2023–24), and the North Carolina Museum of Art (Raleigh, 2023–24).

In 2026, Robertson completed Portrait, Translation, Interpretation, a permanent installation commissioned for the United States Consulate in Erbil, Iraq.

2026 solo exhibitions include Phase Shift at M+B Gallery, Los Angeles and Portraits at CHART Gallery, NYC. Recent press mentions: Musee, White Hot Magazine and Artsy.

Robertson received her BA in Religious Studies, focusing on Buddhism, from the University of California, Berkeley (1997), and her MFA from the Sculpture Department at Yale University (2005).

Art21 CloseUp

Episode #1: Mariah Robertson

A look back at contemporary art photography in the mid/late aughts hosted by Matthew Porter. Hear about the transition from film to digital.

Gorky’s Granddaughter: A documentary art project and video blog created by painters Christopher Joy and Zachary Keeting
2012 Studio Visit