NANOBAH BECKER
Diné, b. 1975

Nanobah Becker is an award-winning writer/director who earned her MFA in directing from Columbia University. Her first two short films, FLAT and CONVERSION (Sundance Film Festival), were selected to screen at numerous festivals in the U.S. and internationally. THE 6th WORLD, a sci-fi short she wrote and directed, was Episode 6, Season 3 of online series FUTURESTATES and premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. The National Gallery of Canada selected the film for inclusion in its prestigious exhibition SAKAHÀN: International Indigenous Art. She directed I LOST MY SHADOW by Laura Ortman, which won best Music Video at the imagineNATIVE film + media arts festival. Her second video collaboration with Laura Ortman, MY SOUL REMAINER, was part of the 2019 Whitney Biennale. Nanobah is a citizen of the Navajo Nation and was a dialogue director on the Navajo language dub of Disney Pixar’s FINDING NEMO. Nanobah hails from Albuquerque, NM and lives in Los Angeles, CA.

NANIBAH CHACON
Diné/Chicana, b. 1980

Nanibah “Nani” Chacon is a recognized painter and muralist. Her most notable works are in the public arts sector, in which she has a cumulative experience of more than 20 years, spanning graffiti, public murals, community-engaged art, and installation. In 2012, she transitioned from studio painting to creating murals and large-scale public works and installations. A return to working on walls and in a public setting was a natural progression—it facilitates the content of her work as well as her personal philosophy that art should be accessible and a meaningful catalyst for social change. Community-based arts and educational integration are also a key component to the work Chacon creates. Her work has been recognized for its unique style and attention paid to site specificity, as well as the integration of sociopolitical issues affecting humanity, with particular focus on women and Indigenous peoples.

LEWIS DESOTO
Cahuilla, b. 1954

Lewis deSoto is a multidisciplinary artist living and working in Napa, Calif. His work is included in major museums as well as corporate and private collections. DeSoto’s practice includes photography, sound installations, sculpture as well as work with customized cars as sculptural objects. He became interested in photography and automobiles as a child, noting that some of the first photographs he took when he was 10 years old were of model cars. DeSoto holds an MFA from Claremont Graduate School and a B.A. in studio art with a specialized study in Buddhist religion from the University of California, Riverside. He has had solo exhibitions at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Harn Museum of Art at the University of Florida, and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego. Additionally, his work has been featured at the SITE Santa Fe biennial, Wave Hill in the Bronx, N.Y., and the San Antonio Museum of Art.

JEFFREY GIBSON
Cherokee/Choctaw, b. 1972

Jeffrey Gibson is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, printmaking, sculpture, beadwork, installation, and performance. Gibson earned his M.A. in painting at the Royal College of Art, London, and a BFA in painting from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Gibson’s artwork engages with his Indigenous heritage, queer histories, popular culture, and his own life experience in his practice. His work is in many prominent collections including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Denver Art Museum, and the National Gallery of Canada. His work has been exhibited at the New Museum, the Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, the Brooklyn Museum, and the SITE Santa Fe biennial. His awards include the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors grant and the MacArthur Fellowship.

ELISA HARKINS
Cherokee/Muscogee (Creek), b. 1978

Elisa Harkins is an artist and composer originally from Miami, Okla. Harkins received her B.A. from Columbia College Chicago and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Muscogee and Cherokee languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the human body as her tools. She has exhibited her work at The Broad Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, documenta 14, the Hammer Museum, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami and the Vancouver Art Gallery. Harkins is currently a mentor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a Tulsa Artist Fellow, and an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe.

BRIAN JUNGEN
Dane-zaa, b. 1970

Brian Jungen is a conceptual sculptural artist known for creating fantastical works from mass-produced consumer goods. By reworking items like plastic chairs, garbage bins, golf bags, and Nike Air Jordan shoes into sculptural objects referencing Northwest Coast visuality as well as animal forms, he comments on the commodification of Indigenous cultures, landscapes, and non-human beings. Jungen attended the Emily Carr University of Art + Design, where he earned a BFA in 1992. Jungen has received numerous awards and residencies including the Gershon Iskowitz Prize at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Sobey Art Award, and the Banff Centre for the Arts residency. He has had major exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Ontario, documenta, the Shanghai Bienniale, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, the Sydney Biennale, Musée d’art Contemporain de Montréal, Tate Modern, the New Museum, and the Vienna Secession.

BRAD KALHAMER
Non-enrolled, b. 1956

Brad Kahlhamer is an artist working in a range of media, including sculpture, drawing, painting, performance, and music, to explore what he refers to as the “third place”—a meeting point of two opposing personal histories. Reimagining a subjective vocabulary through a neo-expressionist lens, his work references hallmarks of 20th century abstract painting, such as German Expressionism, while incorporating a highly personal iconography. Drawing on his tripartite identity, Kahlhamer’s work navigates his Native American heritage, adoptive German-American family and adult life in New York City’s Lower East Side. His initial work as an illustrator at Topps Comics, early exposure to Native American ledger drawings (which he considers to be America’s first graphic novels), and the artistic milieu of downtown Manhattan shapes the language of his paintings and drawings. While referencing Native American history and culture, his work explores his own displaced identity and straddles notions of authenticity and representation within the discourse of Native American art. Kahlhamer’s work has been exhibited in the United States and internationally, including at the Minnesota Museum of American Art, LOOM Indigenous Art Gallery, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the Museé du Quai Branly, Paris, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Kahlhamer has received a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Visual Arts Grant, Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant.

IAN KUALI'I
Kanaka Maoli, b. 1977

Ian Kuali'i is a multidisciplinary self-taught artist of Hawaiian/Apache ancestry whose career spans two decades working in murals, large-scale cut paper, prints, and site-specific installations. While trying to simplify his technique as a graffiti writer, he discovered stenciling and realized an appreciation of the “cut” more than the paint, thus finding his preferred medium of hand-cut paper. From a single sheet of paper using an X-ACTO blade as his tool, his hand-cut paper portraits, journal entries and scenes are masterfully rendered with a blend of loose urban contemporary techniques and collaged found materials. He describes his creative process as “The meditative process of destroying to create.” His work is a balance between “the rough and the delicate” while exploring ideas of modern progress, biodiversity and the foundation of one’s own history.

CANNUPA HANSKA LUGER
Lakota/Mandan/Arikara/Hidatsa, b. 1979

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who uses social collaboration in response to timely and site-specific issues. Luger produces multipronged projects that take many forms. Through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel, and repurposed materials, Luger interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about 21st century Indigeneity. Luger is a recipient of the 2020 Creative Capital Award and the 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. He is also a 2019 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Honoree and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize. Luger has exhibited internationally at venues such as the Gardiner Museum, Washington Project for the Arts, Art Mûr, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, among others. He lectures and participates in residencies and large-scale projects around the globe, and his work is in many public collections. Luger holds a BFA in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

TANYA LUKIN LINKLATER
Alutiiq, b. 1976

Tanya Lukin Linklater’s performances in museums, videos, and installations have been shown in Canada and abroad. She often makes performances in relation to the architecture of museums, objects in exhibition, scores, and cultural belongings, reaching toward shifting perspectives and experiences. Her work centers knowledge production in and through orality, conversation, and embodied practices, including dance. Her work has been shown in institutions including the Art Gallery of Ontario, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Images Festival + Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, the Art Gallery of Alberta, and the Tate Modern. Lukin Linklater studied at University of Alberta and Stanford University, where she received the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship and the Louis Sudler Prize for Excellence in the Creative and Performing Arts. She was awarded the Chalmers Professional Development Grant in 2010 and the K.M. Hunter Artist Award in Literature in 2013. Lukin Linklater is a current doctoral candidate in cultural studies at Queen’s University.

MERYL MCMASTER
nehiyaw (Plains Cree)/English/Scottish/Dutch, b. 1988

Meryl McMaster is known for her large-format photographic self-portraits that have a distinct performative quality, where she explores questions of self through land, lineage, history, and culture, incorporating the production of props and sculptural garments to form a synergy that transports the viewer out of the ordinary and into a space of contemplation and introspection. McMaster is the recipient of the Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award, the REVEAL Indigenous Art Award, the Charles Pachter Prize for Emerging Artists, the Canon Canada Prize, the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, and the OCAD University Medal, and she was shortlisted for the New Discovery Award Arles 2019, the Prix de la Photo “Madame Figaro” Arles 2019, and longlisted for the 2016 Sobey Art Award. McMaster’s work has been included in solo and group exhibitions throughout Canada and internationally, including the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Ryerson Image Centre in Toronto, the Australian Centre for Photography in Sydney, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (New York), Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, and the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, England.

KENT MONKMAN
Cree Nation, b. 1965

Kent Monkman is a Cree interdisciplinary visual artist. A member of the Fisher River Cree Nation in Treaty 5 Territory (Manitoba), he lives and works in Dish With One Spoon Territory (Toronto, Canada). Known for his provocative interventions into Western European and American art history, Monkman explores themes of colonization, sexuality, loss, and resilience—the complexities of historic and contemporary Indigenous experiences—across painting, film/video, performance, and installation. Monkman’s gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, often appears in his work as a time-traveling, shape-shifting, supernatural being who reverses the colonial gaze to challenge received notions of history and Indigenous peoples. Monkman’s painting and installation works have been exhibited at institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Musée des Beaux-Arts de Montréal, Musée d’Art Contemporain de Montréal, the National Gallery of Canada, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Hayward Gallery, Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art, Musée Départemental d’Art Contemporain de Rochechouart, Maison Rouge, Philbrook Museum of Art, and Palais de Tokyo. He has created site-specific performances at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Royal Ontario Museum, Compton Verney Art Gallery in Warwickshire, England, and the Denver Art Museum. Monkman has had two nationally touring solo exhibitions, Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience, and The Triumph of Mischief. Monkman’s short-film and video works, made in collaboration with Gisèle Gordon, have screened at festivals such as the Berlinale and the Toronto International Film Festival. Monkman is the recipient of the Ontario Premier’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, an honorary doctorate degree from OCAD University, the Indspire Award, and the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award.

LAURA ORTMAN
White Mountain Apache, b. 1973

Laura Ortman is a musician, composer, and collaborator working predominantly in amplified violin. Her work emerges in deranged crumpled forms, with sparkling nuance, oily slick transitions, and a brightness mixed with heavy use of amplification and sound distorting effects. Her use of tempo as a storytelling device produces a slow-motion grittiness through a combination of scored and improvised compositions. Ortman has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the Rauschenberg Residency, the Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Composers and Sound Artists, and the National Artist Fellowship through the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Her work has been performed and exhibited at the Whitney Biennial, MoMA PS1, Centre Pompidou, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

MIKE PATTEN
Zagime Anishinabek, b. 1977

Michael Patten is a contemporary visual artist based in Montreal and a member of the Zagime Anishinabek First Nation in Saskatchewan. He holds a BFA in painting and a BFA in drawing with a minor in art history from the University of Regina and has participated in solo and group exhibitions internationally and nationally in museums, artist-run centers, commercial spaces, and university galleries. In 2017, he was one of the Laureates for the Hnatyshyn Foundation’s REVEAL Indigenous Art Awards. Patten is presently the director of the Contemporary Native Art Biennial in Montreal, a nonprofit organization with a mandate to recognize and support contemporary Indigenous art and artists.

ERIC-PAUL RIEGE
Diné, b. 1994

Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) is a weaver and fiber artist finding presence in his mind, body, and beliefs through collage, durational performance, installation, woven sculpture, and wearable art. Riege’s weavings pay homage and link him to generations of weavers in his family and exist as living things that aid him in generating sanctuary spaces of welcome. His work is a celebration and study of being of Hózhó/Diné philosophy that encompasses beauty, balance, goodness, and harmony in all things physical, mental, and spiritual and its bearing on everyday experience. His work, which he describes as being “encompassed in the threads of weaving and life,” creates an immersive and charged space influenced by ceremonial sites, dwellings, and rituals. Riege’s work has been included in numerous exhibitions, including the SITE Santa Fe biennial, National Hispanic Cultural Center, the Navajo Nation Museum, and a solo exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami.

CARA ROMERO
Chemehuevi, b. 1977

Cara Romero is a contemporary fine-art photographer raised between contrasting settings: the rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, Calif., and the urban sprawl of Houston, Texas. Romero’s identity informs her photography, a blend of fine art and editorial photography, shaped by years of study and a visceral approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory, collective history, and lived experiences from a Native American female perspective. As an undergraduate at the University of Houston, Romero pursued a degree in cultural anthropology. Disillusioned by academic and media portrayals of Native Americans as bygone, Romero realized that making photographs could do more than anthropology did in words, a realization that led to a shift in medium. Since 1998, Romero’s expansive oeuvre has been informed by formal training in film, digital, fine art and commercial photography. By staging theatrical compositions infused with dramatic color, Romero takes on the role of storyteller, using contemporary photography techniques to depict the modernity of Native peoples, illuminating Indigenous worldviews and aspects of supernaturalism in everyday life. Maintaining a studio in Santa Fe, Romero regularly participates in Native American art fairs and panel discussions and was featured in PBS’ Craft in America (2019). Her award-winning work is included in many public and private collections internationally.

NEAL INUKSOIS AMBROSE-SMITH
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, b. 1966

Neal Inuksois Ambrose-Smith works in a variety of media such as sculpture, painting, and printmaking and has had a 30-year career as an artist. His work is focused on Pop, Star Wars, comic books, coyote stories, and commercial ads influenced by Andy Warhol. He worked as a studio assistant to his mother, artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, in the 1980s and ’90s, digitally designing embeds for the Denver Airport Floor public art commission. In 2000, Ambrose-Smith began several years of mentorship of non-solvent printmaking with Keith Howard, which led to his earning an MFA degree in alternative printmaking at the University of New Mexico. Ambrose-Smith has shown his prints internationally in South Korea, France, Ireland, and many other places, including universities and museums across the U.S. He has taught alternative printmaking workshops at many universities and conferences for more than a decade. Throughout the 1990s and 2000s, Ambrose-Smith collaborated on many sculpture projects with his mother, one of which is in this exhibition. He worked for the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s CALL program (Creating a Living Legacy) in New York from 2010 to 2014 as a consultant. Currently, he is chair of the art department at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, where he heads and is resurrecting the printmaking program (2015-present). His work is in many collections, including the New York Public Library Print Collection; the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.; Flint Institute, Michigan; Hongik University, Seoul, South Korea; Denver Art Museum; Monash University, Gippsland, Australia; the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis; Cork Printmakers Collection, Cork, Ireland; Missoula Art Museum; and Salish Kootenai College, Montana. Ambrose-Smith has a drawing exhibition with Chiaroscuro Gallery in Santa Fe in spring 2020 and a survey painting exhibition with the Missoula Art Museum in 2020.

JAUNE QUICK-TO-SEE SMITH
Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation b. 1940

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith refers to herself as a cultural arts worker. She uses humor and satire to examine myths, stereotypes, and the paradox of Indigenous life in contrast to the consumerism of American society. Her work is philosophically centered by her strong traditional beliefs and political activism. Smith is internationally known as an artist, curator, lecturer, printmaker, and freelance professor as well as a mentor, for she believes that giving back is a life philosophy. She was born at St. Ignatius Mission, raised by her father, who was an illiterate horse trader, and began working as a field hand at age 8. Smith earned an art education degree at Framingham State College in Massachusetts (now Framingham University) and an M.A. in art at the University of New Mexico. She has organized and curated more than 30 Native exhibitions in 40-plus years. She has given more than 200 lectures at museums and universities internationally and has shown in more than 125 solo exhibitions and more than 650 group exhibitions. Her work is in collections such as the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; the Brooklyn Museum; the Whitney Museum; the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; the Berlin Museum of Ethnology, Germany; the University of Regina, Canada; and the Museum of Modern Art. Smith holds five honorary degrees and has received numerous awards, including the following: 1987 American Academy of Art and Letters Purchase Award, New York; 1995 Painting Award, Fourth International Bienal, Cuenca, Ecuador; 1996 Joan Mitchell Foundation Award; 1997 Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award; 2005 New Mexico Governor’s Award; 2011 inducted into the National Academy of Design; 2012 Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, Living Artist of Distinction; honorary B.A. degree, Salish Kootenai College, Montana; 2018 Montana Governor’s Award; 2018 Lifetime Achievement Award in Printmaking, Southern Graphics Council International; 2019 Murray Reich Distinguished Artist Award, New York; and 2020 United States Artists Fellowship.

JOCK SOTO
Diné/Puerto Rican, b. 1965

Jock Soto is a dancer, choreographer, and a former principal dancer of the New York City Ballet, where he had a 24-year tenure. Soto has held leading roles in numerous works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins and Peter Martins. He retired from professional dancing in 2005, but he returned to the stage in 2007 in Peter Martin’s production of Romeo + Juliet, taking on the role of Lord Capulet. A longtime friend of Nanobah Becker and Laura Ortman, Soto has collaborated on numerous projects including My Soul Remainer (2018), featured in the 2019 Whitney Biennial. In 2011 Soto released his memoir, Every Step You Take (Harper Collins.)

KALI SPITZER
Kaska Dena/Jewish, b. 1983

Kali Spitzer is a conceptual photographer working in film, habitually using 35mm, 120 and large format in her work, as well as utilizing the wet plate collodion process with an 8x10 camera. Her work includes portraits, figure studies and photographs of her community. Spitzer documents Indigenous practices with a sense of urgency, highlighting their vital cultural significance. She focuses on cultural revitalization through her art, whether in the medium of photography, ceramics, tanning hides, or hunting as a form of Indigenous resistance and survivance. She views all of these practices as art and as part of an exploration of self.

C. MAXX STEVENS
Seminole/Mvskoke, b. 1951

C. Maxx Stevens is an installation artist and a member of Seminole/Mvscogee Mvskoke Nation. She is a professor emerita from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She received an MFA in 1987 from Indiana University, a BFA in 1979 from Wichita State University, and an associate of arts degree in 1972 from Haskell Indian Junior College in Lawrence, Kan. She has been honored with many awards, including the 2005 Eiteljorg Fellowship Award, the 2000 Artist Grant from the Andrea Frank Foundation, and the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant. She has exhibited at the University of California at Davis, the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, the Center for Contemporary Arts, the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, the University of Saskatchewan, the Montana Museum of Art and Culture, the Boise Art Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian in New York.

MARIE WATT
Seneca, b. 1967

Marie Watt draws from history, biography, Iroquois protofeminism, and Indigenous teachings, exploring the intersection of history, community, and storytelling. Through collaborative actions she instigates multigenerational and cross-disciplinary conversations that might create a lens for understanding connectedness to place, one another, and the universe. Watt holds an MFA in painting and printmaking from Yale University; she also attended Willamette University and the Institute of American Indian Arts. In 2016 she was awarded an honorary doctorate from Willamette University. Watt has received fellowships and awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, and the Ford Family Foundation. She was the 2005 recipient of the Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Award and is a 2019 recipient of a Fuel Their Fire residency at the Museum of Glass in Tacoma, Wash. Watt’s work has been exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, and Yale University Art Gallery.

KATHY ELKWOMAN WHITMAN
Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara Nation, b. 1952

Kathy Elkwoman Whitman is a beadwork and jewelry artist from the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, on the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota along the Missouri River. She is also of Norwegian descent from her mother. She credits her children and grandchildren for her inspiration and relishes their input. From them come love and happiness, and her art echoes that love. She is a celebrated sculptor, painter, and jeweler, and is also a respected matriarch and knowledge keeper.

STEVEN J. YAZZIE
Diné, b. 1970

Steven J. Yazzie is a multidisciplinary artist working in video, painting, and installation. He is a member of the Navajo Nation and a veteran of the Gulf War, serving honorably with the U.S. Marine Corps. He received a BFA in intermedia at Arizona State University and was named the 2014 outstanding graduate of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. He also studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. Yazzie is the co-founder of Digital Preserve LLC, a video production company collaborating with artists, filmmakers and interdisciplinary creatives to produce meaningful content and stories that highlight Indigenous issues. Yazzie’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally at such venues as the Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, National Gallery of Canada, Art Gallery of Ontario, the Heard Museum, the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Art, and the Wheelwright Museum.