Born in rural Oklahoma, LaDawna Whiteside’s American lineage stretches back to the American Dust Bowl of the 1930s.She is the descendant of a farmer, an orphaned miner’s daughter, a charismatic preacher and a female factory worker. Whiteside sifts through 19th century American social history and uses materials, process and place to form a visual dialogue. Whiteside earned her BA at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock in 2000 and her MFA at the Art Institute of Boston in 2010. She also attended the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she studied Criticism and Writing in 2011. She has completed residencies around the world, most recently in Israel (2019), Mexico (2018), and India (2018). In 2017, she won the Contemporaries Award at the 59th Annual Delta Exhibition for ‘Body: Flesh and Bone, graphite on paper’. For most of her life, Whiteside has lived in Arkansas. She currently lives and works at her studio and farm in Fayetteville. With a watchful eye, she is engaged and aware within the struggle, contemplating how to build cultural bridges through social and landscape integration.