John Feodorov

John Feodorov is a conceptual artist whose work addresses contemporary issues of consumerism, the environment and identity.

John Feodorov was born in Los Angeles and spent summers at his grandparents homestead in the White Horse region of New Mexico. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Art at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Wash. In 2001, he was featured in the first season of the PBS television series, “Art 21: Art for the 21st Century” as well as in the companion book published by Harry N. Abrams. He served as an Arts Commissioner for the City of Seattle and has worked as an artist educator for non-profit youth groups such as Arts Corps and Red Eagle Soaring.

In 2011, Feodorov was honored with an NACF Artist Fellowship in Visual Arts. NACF support allowed him to create mixed media assemblages, 2D works and a looped video production that topically explore the British Petroleum corporation’s oil spill and broader issues concerning our connection and disconnection to the natural world, identity and place.

The new works created in his fellowship year were featured in a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, which Feodorov described as “a pivotal stage” in his career. “The work is a culmination of my concerns over our alienation from Nature and our growing disconnection, physically, spiritually, emotionally, and culturally with Place and Land. The works included in the show, while potentially dystopian, are also warnings, not unlike mythology found worldwide,” said Feodorov. “The work for the exhibit also allowed me to further explore issues of Identity – something that has become more and more important to my work over the years.”

The exhibit was met with acclaim and analysis with critics moving back and forth between the prophetic nature of the work and the metaphor that exists in the movement “from one world to the next” that permeates Native mythologies.