Through drawing as a transdisciplinary practice, Christina McPhee grounds her work in embodied knowledge and the sense of the open work. Across painting, print, video, performance, and photomontage, and over four decades, she has addressed landscape as quest for wisdom and compassion. Spirituality and an ethos of open interpretation motivate her glyph-like abstractions. With music-like offerings McPhee's practice registers data-scapes from scientific visualization, literary texts, and graphical scores for sound. She brings a sensibility of provisional integration to the problem of meaning and purpose in life. At the same time, her work resists direct interpretation, instead relying on the subversive traits of beauty and sensuality to open pathways for reconnaissance.
Christina McPhee has presented solo exhibitions at KinoSaito Art Center, Verplanck (Hudson Valley, New York); Left Field Gallery, Los Osos; Irenic Projects, Pasadena; Cerritos College Gallery, Norwalk (Los Angeles County); American University Museum / Katzen Art Center, Washington, DC; Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden; Sara Tecchia, New York; among others. Her work has been exhibited in group exhibitions with the Art/Science Lab, University of California-Los Angeles as part of the Getty’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide; Wonzimer, KP Projects, Bridge Projects, and Beta Epochs, all in Los Angeles; Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at Washington State University, Pullman; Great Plains Art Museum at University of Nebraska, Lincoln; Bridge Projects, Los Angeles; Patricia Sweetow Gallery, San Francisco; Museo de Arte Moderno, Medellín; Documenta 12, Kassel; Bucharest Biennial 3, Bucharest; Institute of Contemporary Arts, London; among others. McPhee is the recipient of awards and grants including for Carbon Song Cycle (Pamela Z/Christina McPhee) from the National Endowment for the Arts via the Cinematic Arts Program Exploratorium, San Francisco (2023); Ucross Foundation Fellowship (2019); the MAP Fund for Carbon Song Cycle (2012); among others. Her work has been written about in publications including LUMart, Artspace Magazine, BOMB, Leonardo, Digicult, San Francisco Chronicle, LA Weekly, Los Angeles Times, and Artillery.Christina McPhee's work is held in collections of the International Center of Photography, Rhizome Archive at the New Museum, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Thresholds Artspace, Perth, Scotland; Detroit Institute of Arts Museum, and others. Her writing appears in collections published by Punctum, CTheory, and Intellect Books. Born in Los Angeles County, she grew up on the prairies of Nebraska. She received her BFA from Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA from Boston University School of Visual Arts.