Bean Gilsdorf's work examines the visual traces of political histories and sociocultural narratives. Her projects have been exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara, the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts, and the American Textile History Museum, as well as exhibition spaces in England, Italy, China, Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, and South Africa. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Oregon Arts Commission Individual Artist Fellowship (2024), a Ford Family Foundation Fellowship Residency at Ucross (2023), an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant (2020), two creative Fulbright Fellowships to Poland (2015–2016 and 2016–2017), and a Graduate Fellowship Residency at Headlands Center for the Arts (2011–2012). Gilsdorf’s work is in the permanent collections of the Portland Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, Kala Art Institute, and the International Quilt Museum at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She currently lives in Portland, Oregon.