My heritage is influenced by spirit keepers; the bricklayers, fisherfolk, Baptist deacons, Buddhist monks, graffiti walls, planters, and transcendental mantras. I come from the American Midwest and Southeast Asia, places with distinct and contrasting views of the self. The convergence of these two worlds, each with its own traditions, values, and perspectives, inspire me to explore themes of cultural hybridity.
ABOUT
Alena Ahrens is a contemporary Asian American artist whose practice reexamines Color Field painting through a bicultural lens. Working between the United States and Portugal, she expands upon the Eurocentric history of Color Field practices by exploring nuanced chromatic languages rooted in her Asian upbringing and Asia’s broader cultural and material traditions. Her works engage historical sources of color—from mineral and botanical pigments to natural dyeing processes—while drawing on ritualistic aspects of preparation, transformation, and time.
Through these methods, Ahrens reframes Color Field as more than a retinal experience: it becomes a site where pigment, memory, and philosophy converge. The layering of acrylic gradients, natural dyes, and performative gestures opens a field that is both contemplative and embodied, inviting viewers to engage with the liminality of presence and absence, surface and depth, tradition and reinvention.
Ahrens has exhibited in solo and group shows at the Zhou B. Art Center (Chicago, IL), Tipi Project (Brooklyn, NY), MoMA PS1 (New York, NY), DAMU Theatre (Prague, CZ), and ARTROOM (Lisbon, PT). She has participated in international residencies at Residency Unlimited (New York), Château Orquevaux (France), and Hangar Arts (Lisbon). In 2025 a selection of her Satori paintings were acquired by the J.P. Morgan Chase Art Collection.