Dean's minimalist sculptures are infused with theories of poststructuralism and Afropessimism, and both challenge and draw on the legacies of Minimalist art in the United States. While obtaining her BA in studio art at Oberlin College, she sketched her first sculptural work during an art class that centered on Black art. Following her undergraduate degree, Dean went on to serve as the social media coordinator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. Until 2021, Dean was Assistant Curator of Net Art and Digital Culture at Rhizome, an organization dedicated to digital art culture at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City.

Shuttling between writing, curation, and artistic practice, Dean continuously confronts social media, internet culture, and how blackness intertwines therein. In her artistic practice, which consists of sculpture, video, and mixed media, Dean poses questions surrounding cultural production and its dependence on Black visual culture and economies of oppression. She also engages such inquiries in her writing, contributing to publications such as Real Life, Texte zur Kunst, e-flux, Artforum, and Art in America.

Dean’s work has been exhibited worldwide, including Artists Space, New York; the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; REDCAT, Los Angeles; the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; and the Metropolitan Art Centre, Belfast, Northern Ireland. Dean’s work is also held in the collection of the De Point Museum of Contemporary Art, Tilburg, Netherlands; Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York; the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. She has also presented performance works at the Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, and the Swiss Insititute, New York. The Studio Museum first acquired Dean’s work in 2019.