• Dianna Settles

    Composition is nothing more than the fruits of an unexpected meeting between separate worlds and the promise contained in the becoming commune of that meeting (tree planters in the snow), 2022

    Acrylic and colored pencil on panel

    32 x 48 inches

  • Dianna Settles

    Gentle, insistent, we remember the way, our babes toddle barefoot thru the cities of the universe (first make soda from the flowers, then medicine from the berries, then cut the trees to the ground until next Spring), 2022

    Acrylic and colored pencil on panel

    32 x 24 inches

  • Dianna Settles

    Colorfast/fugitives (a vital knowing of the potential to shape, to change, to build, to play, to open the world to new worlds, new possibilities, newly knotting ourselves to our place and time), 2022

    Acrylic and colored pencil on panel

    32 x 48 inches

    Collection of the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami

  • Dianna Settles: A Life Worth Living Would Be A Life Worth Living

    Installation View

    Photo by Cary Whittier

  • Dianna Settles

    All we ever wanted was everything (looting — immediate communization — shares no common ground with the world of the commodity. And yet, it expresses something abyssal within that world: the possibility that everything could be free.), 2022

    Acrylic and colored pencil on panel

    24 x 32 inches

  • Dianna Settles

    Making new alterations to the old calendar, bringing back the holidays that demand rest from our laboring, holidays for pleasure, holidays for praising the wind and the bees, for partaking in all of the ways that we are earthbound (we love our bread, we love our butter, but most of all we love each other), 2022

    Acrylic and colored pencil on panel

    32 x 48 inches

  • Dianna Settles

    How do we follow after you? Cupping circles, culling rows, 2022

    Acrylic and colored pencil on panel

    32 x 24 inches

  • Dianna Settles: A Life Worth Living Would Be A Life Worth Living

    Installation View

    Photo by Cary Whittier

  • Dianna Settles

    An attempt to free ourselves from the condition of listener and viewer to which culture and politics have accustomed us (Onyew and Jordan’s duet), 2022

    Acrylic and colored pencil on panel

    32 x 24 inches

  • A painting by Dianna Settles, dated 2020.

    Dianna Settles

    Self-Portrait with Longevity 2020

    Oil on canvas

    30 x 23 3/4 inches

A Life Worth Living Would Be A Life Worth Living

Dianna Settles

August 25 -October 8, 2022

Pre-Renovation Potluck

Inaugural Exhibition

May 22 -June 30, 2021

Selected Solo Exhibitions

Olly Olly Oxen Free
Dianna Settles
Institute 193
2021

99 Flowers
Dianna Settles
A Versa Gallery
2018

99 Flowers
Dianna Settles
Hi-Lo Press
2018

HI LO
Dianna Settles
Runaway Studio
2015

Sudden Cinder
Dianna Settles
Octane
2014

No Place Like Home
Dianna Settles
Octane
2012

Selected Group Exhibitions

The Hearing Trumpet, Part II
Galerie Marguo
2022

Jurell Cayetano, Gerald Lovell, Dianna Settles
MINT Gallery
2021

Nightwork: 2020 EDGE Award Exhibition
Swan Coach House Gallery
2020

Semblance
MINT Gallery
2020

The One That Got Away
Delaplane
2019

Of Origins and Belonging
High Museum
2019

artintheATL
Hartsfield-Jackson Intl Airport
2019

Art Crush
Factory Atlanta
2019

In These Streets
Trio Gallery
2018

Bodies of Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Collect on Sunday
2018

HER RITUAL
Wish Gallery
2018

WREKtacular
Mammal Gallery
2018

Time Like the Present
Zuckerman Museum of Art
2018

Signs of Solidarity
Facet Gallery
2017

The Gathering
WonderRoot
2017

Assembly Required
Murmur Gallery
2017

This Is It
Blue Mark Gallery
2017

re:FRESH
Swan Coach House Gallery
2017

Dear Atlanta
Big Tree Arts
2017

COLLAPSE
Mason Fine Art
2017

Let’s Be Friends 2
Hi-Lo Press
2017

Signs of Solidarity: Voter Edition
Eyedrum
2017

Silken Fiction
Hi-Lo Press
2016

Let’s Be Friends
Hi-Lo Press
2016

Art Purrty
Giant Lofts
2016

Little Things Mean A Lot
Swan Coach Gallery
2016

Pressing Matters
Paper Planes Gallery
2016

Raised on Replicas
Campfire Gallery
2015

BFA Graduate Exhibition
San Francisco Art Institute
2014

Print, curated by Noemi Szyller
Diego Rivera Gallery,
2014

Concentrate
San Francisco Art Institute
2012

Nick Of Time
Kibbee Gallery
2011

Food Not Bombs Benefit
Wonderroot
2009

Dianna Settles’ (b. 1989) practice examines what it is to exist as part of a collective, portraying how culture, politics, and ideologies intertwine in community. Forms are arranged symbolically in poetic compositions, placing portraits of friends into potent moments in time. Bathhouses, prisons, and gathering places are depicted in conversation, while blooming patterns, details, and colors are woven into the scenes. Settles draws from Western tradition, as well as from the art history of her father’s native Vietnam, mindfully synthesizing multiple lineages while recontextualizing marginalized bodies.

Dianna Settles was born in 1989 in Los Alamitos, CA, and grew up in Blue Ridge, GA. She lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia. Settles received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in 2014. Her solo exhibitions include Olly Olly Oxen Free at Institute 193 (Lexington, KY) in 2021, 99 Flowers at Versa Gallery and Hi-Lo Press (Chattanooga, TN, Atlanta, GA) in 2018, and HI LO at Runaway Studio (Pittsburgh, PA), among others. Settles had also exhibited with MARCH (New York, NY), MINT Gallery (Atlanta, GA), the High Museum (Atlanta, GA), Delaplane (San Francisco, CA), and the San Francisco Art Institute( San Francisco, CA), among others.

As the inaugural artist of Living Walls’ international exchange program, Settles completed an 180 foot-long mural titled: To Our Friends / Á Nos Amis in Paris, France in July of 2019. She has also completed murals in Atlanta, Oakland, and Pittsburgh. Settles was a finalist for the 2019 Forward Arts Foundation Edge Award, and was recently accepted into the Atlanta Contemporary Studio Artist Program. In addition to her own art practice, Settles runs Hi-Lo Press, a print studio and art gallery in Atlanta.

Download full CV

The Anarchist Review of Books
Winter/Spring 2023
Stop Cop City: Atlanta is burning
By ARB Dispatch

Inhabit: Territories
December 19, 2022
Recomposing the Social Body
By Matt Peterson

Yale University
November 15, 2022
Diana Settles: Audio Interview
By Brainard Carey

Alabama Chanin Journal
October 16, 2022
Diana Settles: An Interview
By Maria Owens

White Hot Magazine
October, 2022
Diana Settles: A Life Worth Living Would Be A Life Worth Living at MARCH
By Vittoria Benzine

Frieze
September 27, 2022
Diana Settles: A Life Worth Living Would Be A Life Worth Living at MARCH
By Vittoria Benzine

Hyperallergic
July 30, 2021
Together in Peace and Protest
By Natalie Weis

Ruckus
July 19, 2021
Olly Olly Oxen Free
By Megan Bickel

Burnaway
March 29, 2021
Jurell Cayetano, Gerald Lovell, Dianna Settles at MINT, Atlanta
By Emily Llamazales

ARTSATL
March 4, 2021
Art + Theater: MINT, slavery; Bloody Sunday
By ARTSATL Staff

Medium
August 30, 2019
Watch: Curator Michael Rooks on Highlighting Atlanta Artists’ Perspectives on Immigration and Identity
By The High Museum of Art

Burnaway
August 17, 2019
DIY INDEX: Hi-Lo Press in Atlanta, Georgia
By Burnaway Staff

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
June 13, 2019
Immigration and dislocation are themes of a group show at the High
By Felicia Feaster

Commonplace Review
August 24, 2018
99 Flowers by Dianna Settles: Close Revelations
By Katherine Beaman

fLoromancy
April 27, 2018
Hell City Offering [dianna settles]
By Dianna Settles

The Lifted Brow
December 19, 2018
Issue 35

Remezcla
September 21, 2017
At Atlanta’s Living Walls 2017, a Spotlight on Latinos in the Deep South
By Richard Villegas

The FADER
April 18, 2017
Art School Jocks Challenges Social Dualities On “Catdog”
By Pooja Seshadri

NPR
March 29, 2017
Art School Jocks’ Catchy ‘Just A Gwen’ Is Rolling Its Eyes At You
By Marissa Lorusso

NYLON
July 11, 2016
5 Women-Fronted Punk Bands We’re Obsessed With
By Gabriela Herstik

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