Skip to main content

Header Navigation

Artists

Macon Reed

They // Them // Theirs

Interdisciplinary Artist

New Orleans, Louisiana

A non-binary white artist with long, red hair smiling with brightly colored lipstick and floral shirt in front of palm leaves.

Photo by Meg Turner.

“My practice creates spaces for collective imagination: opportunities to envision solutions to shared concerns, inspire collective action, and connect dots between seemingly divergent histories and experiences.”

Macon Reed works in sculpture, video, painting, and social practice. Reed’s projects bridge participatory approaches with intensive object-making and research. Their work has shown at venues such as Transmediale Vorspiel (Berlin), La Patinoire Royale (Brussels), the University of New South Wales Gallery (Sydney), Wattis Center for Contemporary Arts (San Francisco), Museum of Art and Design NYC, Chicago Underground Film Festival, and the Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans). 

They completed their MFA at University of Illinois at Chicago (2013) and their BFA from Virginia Commonwealth University (2007). They studied Physical Theater at Dah International Theatre School (Belgrade), Radio Documentary at Salt Institute for Documentary Studies (Maine), and Socially-Engaged Arts at The Kitchen (NYC). Reed has attended residencies and fellowship programs at Royal Academy of Arts (London), Eyebeam Center for Art + Technology, Amherst College, Center for Craft (North Carolina), Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, and Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Donor -This award was generously supported by Ford Foundation.

This artist page was last updated on: 01.14.2026

Visual Art
A large, colorful sculpture floats on a lake surrounded by trees. Forms shaped like stalagmites rise in a circle with a fire pit at its center. Two people are visible on the floating structure, with smoke from the fire rising faintly above.

As Above, So Below by Macon Reed. A pair of large outdoor sculptures created to help young people reflect on and process their experiences of the pandemic. Developed in collaboration with Beam Projects and eighty youth participants, the work features a central fire where stories of pandemic hardship are written to be shared and released into its flames.

Photo by Beam Projects.

A Black person with long, thin braids in the middle of pole-dancing and wearing a bikini slightly to the right within the frame. They are up high on the pole, surrounded by an audience watching them inside Macon Reed's installation. There is a large neon "DYKE BAR" sign in the background and the whole space is tinted with warm pink tones.

Eulogy for the Dyke Bar by Macon Reed. Installation in Sydney for Sydney for World Pride Arts in 2023, Community performance honoring the role of sex workers in queer history with Club Chrome, Australia's first BIPOC pole-dancing collective.

Photo by Cassandra Hannagan.

A series of three alcove structures emerge from a wall of bright purple velvet across a magenta and teal checkerboard floor. Several sculptures are evenly placed within the central alcove, including a blue form with red spilling out of it, a large prescription bottle, a bottle of bleach, and a breathing apparatus sitting on a table protruding outward. Below are rows of small hospital beds. The alcove on the right-hand side contains colorful cave stalactite forms that appear to be dripping inside of it. In front of this alcove, a blue chandelier appears to have fallen on the ground. The one on the left is yellow inside but its contents are obscured.

Detail of These Are Not Fables by Macon Reed. Large-scale installation of six altars exploring how pandemics have driven social and structural change throughout history. The one here addresses failed treatments for new diseases including: blood-letting (Bubonic plague), a breathing machine (1918 “Spanish” Flu), and Bleach (COVID-19). The bottle of AZT (controversial early HIV/AIDS medication) has a prescription number representing the number of people who died globally from HIV-related causes in 2020 (650,000).

Photo by Angela Yonke.