Nari Ward

Nari Ward (born 1963 in St. Andrew, Jamaica) is an artist based in New York City. Nari Ward received a BA from Hunter College, CUNY in 1991 and a MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY in 1992. His work is often composed of found objects from his neighborhood, and "address issues related to consumer culture, poverty, and race". He has a wife and two kids. Noemi Ward his wife, Nira Ward his daughter, and his son Zendon Ward.

Nari Ward has shown in solo and group exhibitions around the globe. In 2011 he will have a solo exhibition at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art entitled Nari Ward: Sub Mirage Lignum. His installation will fill all of the museum's second floor and will investigate transformative spaces that straddle the division between leisure and work. In the previous year he exhibited in a solo exhibition at Lehmann Maupin Gallery and was part of Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Rotunda curated by Nancy Spector and held at the Guggenheim Museum. Other notable exhibitions include Prospect.1, New Orleans (2009); Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2006); Documenta XI, Kassel, Germany (2002); and a solo exhibition entitled Nari Ward's Rites-of-Way in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN.

Nari Ward is the recipient of numerous awards including the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Willard L. Metcalf Award (1998), Pollock Krasner Foundation grant (1996), The National Endowment for the Arts (1994), and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship (1992). He has also participated in the Studio Museum in Harlem's Artist-in-Residence program