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    • Healing Trees series (2024 - present)
    • Canopy Constellations: Tracing the Sky-to-Brush-Pile Trail (2023 - present)
    • Heart(h) series (2023 - present)
    • skopia-philia - For the Love of Looking (2022 - present)
    • Memorial Stacks & Mounds (mixed media, 2021 - present)
    • Archaeologies of Loss and Longing (Exhibition, 2023)
    • Memoria (2020-2021)
    • Dwelling in Possibility (2015-2018)
    • Relinquish (2008 - 2018)
    • Compass
    • A Place Called America
    • Pentimento
    • Remembrance
    • In My Backyard
    • Below the Dumbarton Bridge
  • About the Artist
  • Exhibits & News
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  • Adrienne Defendi
    visual artist

    • Portfolios
      Healing Trees series (2024 - present)
      Canopy Constellations: Tracing the Sky-to-Brush-Pile Trail (2023 - present)
      Heart(h) series (2023 - present)
      skopia-philia - For the Love of Looking (2022 - present)
      Memorial Stacks & Mounds (mixed media, 2021 - present)
      Archaeologies of Loss and Longing (Exhibition, 2023)
      Memoria (2020-2021)
      Dwelling in Possibility (2015-2018)
      Relinquish (2008 - 2018)
      Compass
      A Place Called America
      Pentimento
      Remembrance
      In My Backyard
      Below the Dumbarton Bridge

    • About the Artist
      Exhibits & News
      Press
      Curriculum vitae
      Project Statements
      Contact
So my mind sinks in this immensity:
And foundering is sweet in such a sea.

L'infinito, Giacomo Leopardi
Trans. J. Galassi

• • • • •


About the Artist

Adrienne Defendi is an artist whose work explores the cyclical, the ephemeral, and the fragility of life. Her lifelong interests in memory, narrative, and materiality inform her photographic expression and artistic process. Employing different mediums, from analog to alternative processes and various printmaking techniques, her practice charts elements of loss and ritual, and the boundless possibilities within reiteration and experimentation. Adrienne lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.


An award-winning artist, Adrienne has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. Her work has been included in many juried exhibitions, including shows at the de Young Museum, Chung 24 Art Gallery, SOMArts Cultural Center, Berkeley Art Center, RayKo Photo Gallery, SFMOMA Artist’s Gallery in Fort Mason, Triton Museum of Art, the Center for Photographic Art in Carmel, Cordon Potts Gallery in San Francisco, Marin Museum of Contemporary, SOHO Photo, NYC, Davis Orton Gallery, and the A. Smith Gallery.  She has exhibited her photographs internationally at the Czong Contemporary  Art Institute (CICA), South Korea, in the Photo Yokohama Festival, Japan, and in the PH1 Contemporary Photography Gallery in Hungary.  A recipient of the Cadogan Contemporary Art Award, her work has been featured in the publications  The Hand Magazine, On Death, LensWork, Seeing in SIXES, Don’t Smile, Shots, Light Leaks, and B&W Magazine, as well as online in “Lenscratch,” “Your Daily Photograph,” “Don’t Take Pictures,” and “All About Photo.”   Adrienne is currently an artist-in-residence with the City of Palo Alto's Cubberley Artist Studio Program. 

© 2025, Adrienne Defendi. All rights reserved.