Nancy Baker Cahill

In 2020, the Berggruen Institute announced that Baker Cahill would be one of its ten inaugural Artist Fellows in its Transformations of the Human program.

2020: Fellow, Berggruen Institute, Santa Monica, CA

Baker Cahill works in graphite, paint, sculpture, video, virtual reality, and augmented reality. She is the Founder and Creative Director of the 4th Wall public art app. Her work explores themes related to the human body as a site of ongoing struggle and resistance. One series, Bullet Blossoms, involved Baker Cahill shooting her paintings with bullets. Exhibition highlights include the site-specific 2019 Desert X Biennial in the Coachella Valley. Baker Cahill generated large scale, animated drawings in AR for the Salton Sea and above the windfarms in the Coachella Valley. She had a solo exhibition at Boston Cyberarts, an AR public art exhibition at the Boston Greenway, a VR public art project on the Sunset Digital Billboards sponsored by Innovation Foundation, a VR/AR event at Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE), and an immersive solo exhibition at the Pasadena Museum of California Art. In July 2020, Baker Cahill will launch Liberty Bell, an AR public art installation in partnership with Art Production Fund, Jamaica Bay-Rockaway Parks Conservancy, and Rockaway Artists Alliance.

The first version of the app featured Baker Cahill’s studio in 360 and a hologram of herself talking about the conceptual foundation of her work. The 4th Wall app includes, “Coordinates,” a series of curated and site-specific public art exhibitions in AR.

2019: Artist in Residence, Facebook, Los Angeles, CA

2019: Official Selection, Games for Change Immersive Arcade

2019: Nominee for Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, 2019

2019: Impact Maker to Watch 2019, Stratiscope, City Hall, Los Angeles, CA

Baker Cahill is an international public speaker. She was a featured 2018 TEDx speaker in Pasadena, CA and delivered a keynote at Games for Change in New York City, NY.

In 2018, Baker Cahill founded the 4th Wall public art app with developer Drive Studios. 4th Wall is the AR platform through which Baker Cahill exhibits her own 3D drawings as well as curates public art exhibitions in AR.

2014: Herradura Art Competition, Los Angeles 2nd Place 2014

Baker Cahill is the recipient of a 2012 ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation, was a 2019 nominee for the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, and received an "Impact Maker to Watch" award at LA City Hall. She was the subject of a 2019 Bloomberg Media Studios "Art+Technology" short documentary.

2012: ARC Grant from the Center for Cultural Innovation

She co-curated “Defining Line” along the Los Angeles River, and the city-wide “Battlegrounds” (24 artists and 30 AR artworks) including Keith Calhoun and Chandra McCormick in New Orleans, LA. These exhibits discussed social issues such as gentrification, immigration, and the environment. From 2010-2012, Baker Cahill led a collaborative art project at Homeboy Industries called “Exit Wounds.” Works from this project were exhibited throughout Los Angeles as part of the Craft Contemporary (formerly CAFAM)’s “Folk Art Everywhere” program.

Baker Cahill was born in Cambridge, MA. She received her B.A. with Honors in Art from Williams College in 1992. She launched her art career in 2007.

Nancy Baker Cahill (born 1970) is an American multidisciplinary artist based in Los Angeles, California. She is known for work at the intersection of fine art, social justice, and emerging technologies such as virtual reality and augmented reality.