Gabriel Mindel: Artist, Activist, and Teacher

Gabriel Mindel, MFA Visiting Faculty. Photo by Lucien Jacobs.

Written by Montana Becker, MFA '26

If you have ever had the pleasure of sitting in one of Gabriel Mindel’s classes, you know he is an incredibly kind and knowledgeable professor, but you might not be aware of his incredible career as a musician, artist, and activist. I had the pleasure of meeting Gabriel early in 2024 when he first came to serve as a visiting professor in the MFA program. At the time, I knew him simply as a humble, quiet teacher who cared deeply for his students. While this is reason enough to celebrate his presence at MCAD, Gabriel has also had a noteworthy career as an artist and musician. I had the privilege of interviewing Gabriel about his rich artistic career in the spring of 2026. In listening to him describe his artistic history, I came to see his practice as sort of a kaleidoscope where activism, music, visual art and collaboration meet to form his dynamic artistic life.

The Artist

Gabriel's artistic practice and musicianship developed alongside each other through two different collaborations he became involved in in the early 2000s. Gabriel’s band Yellow Swans had its inception twentyfive years ago when he started collaborating with his band mate, Peter Swanson. Yellow Swans belongs to the noise music genre which gained a following in the United States in the 1960s and 70s. Gabriel’s interest in sound art and noise music was something that developed through his engagement with punk rock during his youth in the San Francisco Bay area. His artistic practice developed alongside his musical career as he became involved with the art collective Red76, which was founded by artist and MCAD adjunct professor, Sam Gould. Over time, Gabriel's participation in both collaborations led him to pursue his Master of Fine Art at Simon Fraser University, at Burnby, British Columbia, and later a PhD in Collective Consciousness from the University of California Santa Cruz. Gabriel worked as a practicing artist and musician for a decade before pursuing a formal arts education in 2011. When he chose to pursue his MFA, he did it with the hope of reconciling a divide he was observing between his musical work and his artistic practice. He said, “I really wanted to figure out how to bring sound and social practices into a relationship, and to find a place within the gallery or within the institutional space where those things could coexist and interact.”

Installation view of Gabriel Mindel’s MFA thesis exhibition, The Contingent Sculpture Workshop, at the Audain Gallery, Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, Canada, 2013.

While maintaining his role as a professor at MCAD, Gabriel also nurtures his own artistic practice and musicianship. During the winter of 2026, Gabriel was invited to participate in a residency at Groupe de Researches Musicales (GRM) located in Paris, France. GRM is an institution with a deep history in experimental sound art with an archive of rare electronic musical instruments that residents are allowed to access. Yellow Swans was invited to complete a residency at GRM in order to create a piece of music in conjunction with the institution's annual festival. During the residency, Mindel and Swanson developed a piece that converged on resistance, ghosts and poetry. Gabriel explained, “The piece of music we performed was inspired by the opportunity to play in the historical context of GRM, but also by my recent cancer diagnosis, which all unfortunately coincided with the ICE occupation of Minneapolis, MN. The piece ended up being based on a poem I wrote that tried to in some way to think through, or feel through, these different elements: my cancer, fascism, and ghosts, the latter being the ghosts that live in the air and in the ‘house of radio’ [the Maison de la Radio et de la Musique where the group was working].” The resulting work was titled “Hunted House,” and performed by the group at GRM’s annual festival.

Mindel in residence at Groupe de Researches Musicales, working in Plateau 119 in the Radio France Building, Paris, France, 2026

As he reflected on the experience at GRM, Gabriel explained that the residency gave the band an opportunity to work with poetry for the first time, which is an idea they had been toying with for much of their career. This residency and the hardships they were reflecting on through the work became the catalyst for them to finally integrate poetry into their musical practice. The residency also gave Mindel and Swanson the ability to expand their identity as musicians. Gabriel said, “We have spent decades more or less functioning as a rock band, even though we understood what we were doing to be something more like art. I think the residency was an intensely needed catalyst for us to think differently about our work as artists.” He explained that making music in the United States has a standard work rhythm and creative form that can be limiting to people who consider themselves to be more than musicians. The residency at GRM allowed the band to break out of that standard and more fully embrace their role as an interdisciplinary project, one integrated into the world of art as well as music. In concluding, Gabriel said, “Moving forward, it feels like we're going to make music differently than we did before.”

Mindel and bandmate Peter Swanson performing as Yellow Swans at the Cedar Cultural Center, Minneapolis, 2026.

The Activist

Gabriel has long operated as a politically engaged artist, often making and curating work that could be contextualized as activism. I asked Gabriel to share more with me about the political nature of his work and the way he believes his artwork operates as activism. In responding he clarified that activism can take many forms. He explained, “In the anarchist tradition, there's a way of describing directly intervening in a situation that needs addressing, and it’s called ‘direct action.’ So, when you are feeding someone who's hungry, that's a direct action. When you are physically preventing ICE agents from kidnapping a child, that's a direct action. I think art typically is a form of indirect action. Art impacts the context and the conditions, and that, I think, supports some forms of direct action.” So art is not always directly impacting the conditions, but it can essentially be a catalyst for action and is in this way activism. “To my mind,” he said, “making political art is about creating a cultural context for the changes in the world that I want to see, and produces a sense of possibility, which I think is necessary for imagining the world differently than it is.” Gabriel is committed to making art that serves this function because he believes it is an essential feature of activism. While he noted the value of his work as an artist activist, he also wanted the distinction between direct and indirect action to be clear. He said, “I would never want to confuse that work with someone who is doing work that puts them in harm's way. It's okay for those things (indirect v. direct action) to be different. They don't have to be equivalent. They can both be important and different at the same time.”

In the context of his recent project with GRM, Gabriel noticed that the poetic element of the song “Air Materials” resonated strongly with Yellow Swan’s audiences because it overtly referenced imagery from the resistance movement in Minneapolis. He said, “We played in Paris, we played twice in London, and then a fourth show in Brussels. In every single one of those performances, either directly from the audience or after the show, I had people communicating an intense sense of solidarity with Minneapolis, and a really intense sense of wanting to convey their anger at what was happening here.” He explained that it’s hard to imagine what individuals far from a situation might think or feel about it. He found that the audiences, despite their physical distance from the situation, communicated an intense solidarity that was in some ways facilitated through the music. This is just one example of how Gabriel's artistic work operates as activism by creating conditions where the viewer can express anger, frustration, and solidarity with regard to social unrest and political injustice.

The Teacher

Mindel has been serving as a visiting professor at MCAD since 2024. During that time, he has taught a variety of courses within both the Masters of Fine Art program and in undergraduate departments, including (but not limited to) Graduate Critique Seminar, Graduation Preparation I and II, and an Experimental Sound course. While he clearly has expertise in sound and installation, much of his involvement in the MFA program has revolved around art theory, art writing, critique and project development. For Gabriel, teaching operates as an extension of the social practice elements of his artistic practice. As one of his former students, it is evident to me that Gabriel’s background in socially engaged art has informed his teaching practice. His daily approach to the classroom is one centered on building collective knowledge and offering space for student discovery. One of the sources for this socially engaged method of teaching has been his own artistic practice. Gabriel says, “In many instances I’ve done community organizing and in some ways have been an activist. And those things also inform my practice, both musical and artistic. One of the things that I'm passionate about is using the knowledge I gain from those activities, not just as subject matter, but as a method for creating community and even constructing a classroom.”

Mindel's Experimental Sound class, in process, Minneapolis College of Art and Design, Minneapolis, 2026.

In discussing his teaching practice further, Gabriel explained that there are systems, theories and ideas that have helped shape the way the world functions. His goal is to bring light to these systems and their origins through his teaching practice. He says, "I try really hard not to tell people there's a correct way to think, but to give people some indication of ideas that shape the world. I'm not trying to tell them what to think so much as show why they think the way they do." Having been one of Gabriel’s students, I know that his experience as an artist and activist informs his activities in the classroom and leads to an academic discourse that is rich with theoretical knowledge and lived experiences.

MCAD is better for having Gabriel Mindel as a professor both in the undergraduate programs and the MFA program. He has a rich history of creating socially engaged art for the betterment of society as well as a dynamic teaching practice informed by his creative and engaged work. As one of Gabriel’s former students, I can say confidently he has a profound impact in the classroom. I can recall a class session where Gabriel was encouraging me and my classmates to take our creative vision out into the world and use it in every context. He essentially said, “You don’t stop being an artist when you go out into the world.” That advice has impacted me profoundly and changed my perspective about artistic living. Since having the opportunity to interview Gabriel, I realized that statement is not a mantra, it’s a piece of advice he lives.

Gabriel's portfolio website