Gabriel Mindel

Mindel is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, and scholar. He works primarily in sound, text, visual mediums, and socially collaborative forms. From 2001-2012 his work with Sam Gould and Red76 was supported by Creative Time; the Douglas F. Cooley Memorial Gallery at Reed College; 01 San Jose; SF MoMA; The Bureau for Open Culture; Manifesta 8; The Walker Arts Center; the Department of Education and Cultural Affairs of the US State Department, and many others. He was also a co-founder of the Lower Mainland Painting Company (2011-2013) who received commissions from the Littman & White Galleries at Portland State University, VIVO Media Arts Centre, and Shudder Gallery. His solo works have been exhibited by the Audain Gallery, Unit/Pitt Projects, 221a, and Capilano University. His current artistic research focuses on surfacing sonic archives of political resistance and fugitive imagination.

For over two decades Mindel has also performed and recorded experimental music under his own name and in collaborative ensembles, touring internationally, composing for film and dance, and producing nearly 100 recordings. In addition to his solo work he currently records and performs with transmission artist Anna Friz, and as one half of the allegedly legendary noise duo Yellow Swans.

His recent curatorial work — Landscape and Life (Indexical, 2022-23); On Love and Revelation (Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, 2024) — focuses on artistic experimentation, landscapes, and the trouble of settler colonialism. Previous curatorial projects have included speculative concrete poetry, feminist responses to sexual violence, the impact of parenthood on contemporary art practices, materials from the Grateful Dead archive, and the Strathcona Art Gallery (2011-15) a residency, library, and exhibition space run out of his Vancouver home in collaboration with artist Aja Bond.

Mindel received an MFA from Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts and a PhD in the History of Consciousness at the University of California Santa Cruz. His scholarly research focuses on the relationship between noise, protest, and power. Writings of his have appeared in both scholarly and para-academic publications, including Foundry, Resonance: Journal of Sound and Culture, RadioDoc Review, Sounding Out!, Folklife Magazine and The Journal of Aesthetics & Protest. His current book project, On Tumult, argues for noise’s potential to radically transform, evade, and abolish structures of political power that constrain people’s everyday cultural, political, and social lives.