06/30/2026
Aleyah Austin [ b. Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1998 ] is an emerging, multidisciplinary artist based in Indianapolis. They received an MFA in Ceramics from Cranbrook Academy of Art in the Spring of 2025 and hold a BFA in Studio Art from Bennington College. They have exhibited across the Midwest, including at Dream Clinic Project Space in Columbus, OH; Old Friends Gallery in Chicago, IL; and Forum Gallery in Bloomfield Hills, MI. In the summer of 2025, they were awarded the Ox-Bow School of Art Summer Fellowship for ceramics. Other awards include the Stewart Thomson Fellowship at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in 2025 and the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation Materials Award in 2024.
Coordinates of Belonging includes one sculpture by Aleyah, pictured here. On Saturday, June 11th, they will lead Conjuring The Sun, a lumen printing workshop in our exhibition Assembly offerings. The 3-hour afternoon with the artist includes a guided nature walk and collection of foliage, light, and shadow to create ephemeral “photographic drawings” under the summer sun.
Aleyah Austin
Speak the color of my organs, 2026
Ceramic, glaze, cast glass, water, fountain pump, plywood, mortar, epoxy, beeswax
Fountain: 20 x 15 x 15 in
Plinth: 16.75 x 23.5 x 18 in
[ Coordinates of Belonging admission is by ticket or assembly registration only — event details and tickets at thisiscompanion.com ]
For sales and other inquiries, email [email protected]
Photography by aleyah austin and Anna Powell Denton.
On Speak the color of my organs, Austin shares —
“You speak of the color of m/y organs. I cannot see them. I hear your voice hissing in m/y ears.” From Monique Wittig’s The Le***an Body, translated by David Le Vay.
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“I respond to the vessel and its associations with function, fluidity, sustenance, and the q***r body. I obsess over fountains and grottos as representations of dualities: the internal and external body, public and private pleasure, all that is natural and artificial. Proximity to water, or other fluids, seeps into my work. Speak the color of my organs addresses themes of interconnection, post-humanism, q***rness, and the erotic.”
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