GABRIELLE BANZHAF
earnest curatorial vernacular
CONTACT
Gabrielle Banzhaf is an Indigenous Peruvian and German curator and cultural preservationist based in Cleveland, Ohio. She inhabits and explores spaces where public and private life collide, embrace, and interweave. Her exhibitions and experimental projects are endeavors in collective gestures of ritual, care, and memory.
Hypoallergenic Art Review / Founder + Publisher
Sehnsucht Consulting LLC / Founder + Lead Mental Health Consultant at Take Care by Gabrielle Banzhaf
MSW Social Work
[2025]
Cleveland Institute of Art / Cleveland OH
BFA Fiber + Material Studies [2007-2010]
Oregon College of Arts + Crafts / Portland OR
Mobility Program [2008]
Studied furniture making, woodworking + bookmaking
Corcoran College of Art + Design / Washington DC
Photojournalism [2006-2007]
Ursuline College / Cleveland OH
Certificate of Arts in Public Relations + Marketing Communications [2012]
by Brit Krohmer + Zack Rafuls
Text Contributor
First Edition 2025
100 Copies
68 Pages, 8.5 x 10.5 in
color photocopy
riso cover
Sehnsucht
Editor + Text Contributor
in collaboration with Jon Gott
44 Pages
5 x 7.75 in.
Tri-fold Insets
Wire-bound
Various Paperstock
Edition of 50
Risograph Print and Assembly in-house at Constance // Erik Kiesewetter [New Orleans LA]
Awarded a 2024 Creative Impact Fund grant by Assembly for the Arts for her curatorial and artistic practice.
Featured as a Support for Artist grantee at Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center in 2024, noted for merging art, social practice, and community engagement.
https://www.ideastream.org/arts-culture/2025-05-09/culture-art-and-community-find-a-home-in-cleveland-with-shed-projects
Canvas CLE. “New Cleveland Art Space Aims to Connect Visual Culture, Build on History and Cultivate Relationships.” Canvas CLE. May 2024.
https://canvascle.com/new-cleveland-art-space-aims-to-connect-visual-culture-build-on-history-and-cultivate-relationships
Assembly for the Arts. “2024 Creative Impact Fund Awardees.” Assembly CLE. 2024.
https://assemblycle.org/2024-creative-impact-fund-awardees
Julia de Burgos Cultural Arts Center. “Gabrielle Banzhaf | 2024 Support for Artist Grantee.” Julia de Burgos. 2024.
https://juliadeburgos.org/f/gabrielle-banzhaf-%7C-2024-support-for-artist-grantee
Cool Cleveland. “Peruvian Arts Explores His Country’s Difficult History at SHED Projects.” Cool Cleveland. June 2025.
https://coolcleveland.com/2025/06/peruvian-arts-explores-his-countrys-difficult-history-at-shed-projects
Emily Farranto, “Moving SHED”, The New Orleans Art Review, 12/2022
www.neworleansreview.org/moving-shed/
Andy Pham, “Nadia Mohamed: Mistakes Were Made (SHED Gallery) Review”, Antigravity Magazine, 05/2022
Eliza Fillo, “Face of Fine Art”, New Orleans Magazine, 05/2022
Last Updated 24.10.31
documentation by Akeylah Wellington
Akeylah Wellington + Margaret Kammerer
Vessel City / Cleveland OH
These are not generic expressions of sentimentality, but deeply rooted personal reflections on memory, media, human nature, and a rapidly evolving relationship with technology.
This Is Not Sufficient considers emotional dissonance from inhabiting spaces both bodily and digital. The artist's handwork embodies tensions between immediacy and patience, remoteness and intimacy, between the feed and the thread.
Akeylah and Margaret recall an innocent sense of wonder with a new digital world in contrast with current fears of losing physical contact.
with text contributions by: Katherine Ainsley, Gabrielle Banzhaf and haiku by Evelyn Jordan
Sibyl Gallery / New Orleans LA
Constance / Erik Keisewetter / New Orleans LA
This book was made as a conceptual piece designed to recall an obscure atlas or field guide in conjunction with Jon Gott’s show Foreign Correspondent (at Sibly Gallery in New Orleans). The book features Gott's notes and poetry in conversation with made-and-found imagery. The book includes writing in 3 different formats, as well as drawings by Gabrielle. Only 50 editions were printed making the book a precious object which is meant to highlight the “economy” that Gott has built out within the show. This was a collaboration between Gabrielle and Erik Kiesewetter of Constance in New Orleans.
documentation by Nicole Carroll
Jon Gott
SHED Projects / Cleveland OH
For the past six years, one of us has always rushed home to spend the last few minutes of Valentine’s Day together. This year, it was my turn. Barely making it in time, I arrived home to a fully hung painting show – a collection meticulously crafted by Jon, mapping the memories and changes of our time together. I am proud to curate from this deeply personal collection.
This exhibition offers a glimpse into the most intimate moments and memories of our complex and multifaceted relationship. With an act of vulnerability, these works are displayed within the intimate and private spaces of our home. Originating from the first house we shared together in Lakewood, Ohio, these paintings have been years in the making.
documentation by Blake Cook
Blake Cook
Dream Clinic Project Space / Columbus OH
documentation by Nicole Carroll
Jon Gott + Jo Willis
Usable Space / Milwaukee WI
Blake Cook, Terry Durst, Jon Gott, Abrahm Guthrie, Jordan Hess, Brit Krohmer, Ryan Leitner, Loretta Park, Melissa Pokorny + Zack Rafuls
Shed Gallery / New Orleans LA
Heavily influenced by Sophie Calle and her practice of public vs. private, to me, SHED (and the act of having a “gallery”) is a social and philosophical experiment, a performance piece of sorts. A framework to explore, together with artists, ideas about social values and art, and how they are informed by the spaces and places where we live and work. Over the past year, we worked together with individual artists, one at a time, to produce projects tailor made for the space. For the final show of the season I decided to bring together a mix of new artists and continue conversations with artists that we had started with their solo shows.
Our relationships with dogs are complex, multifaceted, deeply emotional, and as old as time itself. Some of the first known representations of dogs were discovered in rock art on the Arabian peninsula dating back as far as 9,000 years. These particular images of leashed hunting dogs have helped solve the evolutionary puzzle of how and when dogs became domesticated. The people who painted them likely did it because dogs were a meaningful part of their daily lives. Our special counterparts, they have informed humans and our cultures, histories, and identities as much as anything else you could imagine. The artists in this show produced work with these feelings in mind.
With GOOD DOG BAD DOG I wanted to further test the pliability of our domestic sphere by installing works throughout the entire outdoor spaces of our home- including the deck, driveway, tool shed, and the house itself. Including these spaces allows the work to exist in ways that challenge both our concept of living space, and the places we encounter art. The materiality of these works is together with the materiality of place- underneath the giant oak tree, the home, the garden, amongst shovels and tools and bags of mulch. Some moments there's what feels like acceptance- an uncanny familiarity between the work and its surroundings, in others the encounter is more strange.
© GABRIELLE BANZHAF 2025