NATIVE AMERICAN ART NOW
SUNDARAM TAGORE GALLERY
542 W. 26TH STREET, NEW YORK
September 7 – October 7, 2023
We are pleased to present paintings, sculpture, photography and an installation by more than twenty contemporary Indigenous artists from diverse tribal affiliations spanning the United States and Canada.
Native American Art Now, curated by Leesa Fanning, will be our largest and most ambitious exhibition of the year.
The established and emerging artists explore a wide range of subjects—land, place, nature and spiritual worldviews, including creation stories, the traumas of colonialism and racism—expressing resilience and hope. The work has emerged from customary practices and traditional meanings, forms, materials and techniques, as well as more contemporary subjects and alternative media and art-making processes.
BARRY ACE
Anishinaabe (Odawa) M’Chigeeng First Nation, Manitoulin Island, Ontario, b. 1958
The artist’s work represents historical continuum through his embrace of Anishinaabeg beadwork of the Great Lakes region. Its complex floral and geometric imagery combined with contemporary materials subvert the idea that Native art is fixed in the past. His gashkibidaagan or bandolier bag titled Alterity artfully incorporates motion-sensor panels that display moving imagery of historical beadwork as pixel patterns.
Work by Ace, who is based in Ottawa, Ontario, can be found in numerous collections, including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Québec; Art Gallery of Ontario and Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto; and the North American Native Museum, Zurich, among others. His work is currently on view in the Heard Museum, Phoenix.
Pictured: Barry Ace, Alterity, 2023, mixed media, 84 x 14 x 2 inches/213.4 x 35.6 x 5.1 cm
NORMAN AKERS
Osage, b. 1958
Based in Kansas and Oklahoma, Norman Akers explores issues of identity, culture, including Osage mythos, place, and the dynamics of personal and cultural transformation. His vivid prints and paintings incorporate a unique lexicon of symbolic imagery drawn from tribal oral histories, maps, the natural world, contemporary culture, and art-historical references. Akers’ oil on canvas titled Sun Dog and Ghost Trees is inspired by Osage origin stories, Native culture, and a profound sense of place, both physical and spiritual.
Akers is represented in the collections of the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian and the Library of Congress, Print Collection, Washington, DC; The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Rockwell Museum, Corning, New York; Minneapolis Institute of Art; and the Denver Art Museum, among others. He currently has work on view at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, North Carolina.
Pictured: Norman Akers, Sun Dog and Ghost Trees, 2023, oil on canvas, 68 x 74.1 inches/172.7 x 188.2 cm
MARCUS AMERMAN
Choctaw, b. 1959
Marcus Amerman, who is based in Santa Fe, works across multiple disciplines, including sculpture, painting and performance art, but is best known for his strikingly original bead art. Influenced by Pop Art, social commentary and his own lived experiences, Amerman creates photorealistic portraits and tableaux, such as Greetings from the Smithsonian, which is charged with references to the diversity of Native cultures, presented through the quintessential medium of Plains beadwork.
Amerman’s work is in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC; American Museum of Natural History and the Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; and the Portland Art Museum, Oregon; among others. His work is currently on view at the Museum of Arts and Design, New York.
Pictured: Marcus Amerman, Greetings from the Smithsonian, beads, 17.6 x 22.1 inches/44.7 x 56.1 cm
CHRISTI BELCOURT
Métis, b. 1966
Ontario-based artist Christi Belcourt is widely known for her extraordinary pointillist paintings that express profound love for Mother Earth. The Night Shift, created especially for this exhibition, is a celebration of nocturnal creatures articulated through thousands of tiny dots that simulate centuries-old Anishinaabe beadwork.
Belcourt’s work is in the collections of National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; First Peoples Hall at the Canadian Museum of History, Gatineau, Quebec; and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Her work is currently on view at the Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton.
Pictured: Christi Belcourt, The Night Shift, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 76 x 102 inches/193 x 259.1 cm
MONTY CLAW
Diné (Navajo), b. 1977
New Mexico-born artist Monty Claw is a painter, beadworker, and maker of refined Peyote instruments. His blue-and-gold Macaw fan Morning Blessing is a representation of a morning greeting after a long night in a Native American Church service, which combines Christian teachings with localized spiritual practices of tribal communities, emphasizing healing ceremonies. Peyote, prayer, and ritual instruments such as fans are at the heart of such ceremonies.
Claw’s work is in the collections of The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri; Denver Art Museum; Minneapolis Institute of Arts; Musée du quai Branly – Jacques Chirac, Paris; and the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park, Kansas, among others.
Pictured: Monty Claw, Morning Blessing, 2023, blue and gold macaw tail feathers; dyed goose, rooster, and pheasant feathers; seed beads; white deer leather; tufa cast sterling-silver hummingbird ornament; beaded horse hair; handmade deer-leather fringe, 44 x 14.5 x 1.5 inches/111.8 x 36.8 x 3.8 cm
LOLA S. CODY
Diné (Navajo), b. 1956
Lola S. Cody is an award-winning, third-generation textile artist who learned the craft of Navajo tapestry weaving at her mother’s side. To create Generations, Cody, who lives in No Water Mesa, an area in the southwest corner of the Diné reservation in Arizona, departed from her customary symmetrical patterns and earthy palette in favor of an abstract composition articulated in saturated hues. Unlike traditional techniques dependent on counting warp and weft threads to produce symmetrical designs, this approach to textile making is challenging because the organic shapes develop spontaneously. Another of Cody’s textiles woven in a contemporary style is in the collection of the Heard Museum in Phoenix.
Cody’s archival rugs are also in the collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC; and the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis.
Pictured: Lola S. Cody, Generations, 2022, dyed wool, 45 x 36.5 inches/114.3 x 92.7 cm
RICHARD GLAZER DANAY
Kahnawake Mohawk, b. 1942
Born to a Jewish mother and Mohawk father, the Los Angeles-based artist grew up in the Coney Island neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York, where he and many of his relatives were ironworkers. His brightly colored paintings, sculptures and assemblage installations combine Mohawk influences with pop-culture references, imbuing his work with a mix of tradition and modernity. Danay is particularly known for his rattle installations, such as Shake, Rattle & Roll, which comprises hundreds of found objects of contemporary culture suspended from the ceiling.
Danay has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe. His work is in the collections of the British Museum, London; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC; Heard Museum, Phoenix; Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; and The San Diego Museum of Art, among others. His work is currently on view at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe.
Pictured: Richard Glazer Danay, Shake, Rattle & Roll, 2009-2012, Mixed media, 144 x 36 x 36 inches/365.8 x 91.4 x 91.4 cm
BEAU DICK
Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw, Kwakwaka’wakw, 1955–2017
Celebrated artist and activist Beau Dick is acclaimed as one of the Canadian Northwest Coast’s most prolific master carvers, a skill he learned at an early age from his father and grandfather. Dick was one of the first Indigenous artists to gain recognition in the contemporary art world and he used both his activism and art, including carved totem poles and masks, to deconstruct preconceived intellectual frameworks of contemporary Western art and anthropology.
In his lifetime, Dick exhibited extensively. He is represented in the collections of the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia; Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Seattle; and the Heard Museum, Phoenix; among others. Beau Dick died before his exhibition of carved masks opened at Documenta 14 in 2017, but the inclusion of his work solidified his position as an influential figure on the international stage. His work is currently on view at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York.
Pictured: Beau Dick, Yo'lakwame, 1998, red cedar, acrylic, horsehair, 10.5 x 13 x 3 inches/26.7 x 33 x 7.6 cm
Image courtesy of Fazakas Gallery
HOCK E AYE VI EDGAR HEAP OF BIRDS
Cheyenne and Arapaho, b. 1954
The artist, who is based in Oklahoma City, presents a suite of four brightly colored abstract paintings from his long-running Neuf series that expresses spiritual meaning and a reverence for nature. Also on view is Our Red Nations Were Always Green, one of the artist’s highly acclaimed text-based monoprint installations. A similar work from the series was acquired by MoMA in 2019.
Heap of Birds is represented in the collections of The British Museum, London; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Pictured: Hock E Aye Edgar Heap of Birds, Nuance of Sky 4, 2012, acrylic on canvas, 36 x 42 inches/91.4 x 106.7 cm
ROBERT HOULE
Anishinaabe Saulteaux, b. 1947
Toronto-based artist Robert Houle creates work that seeks to decolonize historical narratives and functions as a reparative, healing practice. In his diptych Saysaygon, an enigmatic figure stands opposite an abstract color-field landscape punctuated by two equal-arm crosses. These floating forms represent the Morning Star—often depicted in Indigenous art—that heralds the break of a new day, hope, restoration, and renewal.
A major retrospective showcasing five decades of Houle’s work is currently on view in Washington, DC, at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Pictured: Robert Houle, Saysaygon, 2016, oil on canvas, 84 x 120 inches/213.4 x 304.8 cm
MATTHEW KIRK
Diné (Navajo) and European descent, b. 1978
Arizona-born, New York-based artist Matthew Kirk presents a new mixed-media work inspired by Diné motifs found in textiles as well as his urban environment. The three-dimensional construction Spirit Raiser is filled with his repertoire of distinctive motifs configured on what he calls “tiles.” Kirk employs his own pictorial language of elemental signs to explore the intersection of his Indigenous and Euro-American heritage and positions himself in respect to both.
Kirk was a 2019 recipient of the Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship for Contemporary Native American Art. His work is in the Forge Project collection in Taghkanic, New York; the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, New York; and the Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, among others. His work is currently on view at the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, New York.
Pictured: Matthew Kirk, Spirit Raiser, 2023, acrylic, oil and graphite on Tar paper, cedar, Coroplast, Sheetrock, woven into steel mesh and mounted on panel, 84 x 84 inches/213.4 x 213.4 cm
ATHENA LaTOCHA
Hunkpapa Lakota and Ojibwe, b. 1969
Inspired by her upbringing in Alaska, LaTocha creates works that explore geology, history and humankinds’ relationship with nature, land and the environment. LaTocha’s process involves spending time in a specific place, sketching, photographing and collecting nature’s materials from the site, while studying the location to better understand it. For Ozark, she used site-specific materials and with her hands, pressed lead sheets onto limestone cliffs, capturing every stratification of the rock. Then, at her studio, she placed swaths of photographic paper on the floor and added earth from Pea Ridge, sumi ink and other materials, repeatedly pouring, sweeping and scraping to create a rich palimpsest-like surface.
LaTocha has exhibited extensively, including at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, and at MoMA PS1 in New York. She is represented in the collections of the Dallas Museum of Art; the Forge Project collection, Taghkanic, New York; and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, among others. Her work is currently on view in Athena LaTocha: The Past Never Sleeps at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.
Pictured: Athena LaTocha, Ozark (Shelter in Place), 2018, sumi ink, Pea Ridge earth on paper and lead, 120 x 288 x 12 inches/304.8 x 731.5 x 30.5 cm. Photo by Edward Robison III.
NADIA MYRE
Algonquin member of the Kitigan Zibi Anishinaabeg First Nation, b. 1974
Interdisciplinary artist Nadia Myre says her purpose is to “paint nature through beadwork.” The Quebec-born, Montreal-based artist created a poetic landscape made from intricately woven ceramic beads especially for the exhibition. She used pixelated abstract photographs as inspiration for the work, which is part of a new series. Light Assembly: Julie is an ode to painter Rita Letendre (1928–2021), an Indigenous artist of Abenake and Québécois descent, and Myre’s mother, and the new series is devoted to female relatives.
Myre has exhibited extensively, including at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York. Her works are on permanent exhibition at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa; and Canada’s embassies in Paris, London and Greece.
Pictured: Nadia Myre, Light Assembly: Julie, 2023, Woven handmade ceramic beads, stainless steel wire, 84 x 60 inches/214.4 x 152.4 cm
DAN NAMINGHA
Tewa-Hopi, b. 1950
The New Mexico-based painter and sculptor comes from a distinguished family of artists. His work, which hovers between representational and abstract, often depicts imagery of his homeland and his people. For his ongoing series Points Connecting, he developed a unique visual language characterized by combinations of connected geometric forms articulated in bold, saturated colors. The series draws inspiration from 1960s minimalism and the artist’s Tewa-Hopi worldview, which he expresses through abstraction.
Namingha has exhibited extensively, including in the groundbreaking exhibition Stretching the Canvas: Eight Decades of Native Painting (2019–2022) at the New York branch of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian. His work is in the British Royal Collection, London; the Heard Museum, Phoenix; Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe; and the Native American Center for the Living Arts, New York. His work is currently on view at the Colby College Museum of Art, Waterville, Maine.
Pictured: Dan Namingha, Points Connecting #45, 2023, acrylic on canvas, 60 x 84 inches/152.4 x 213.4 cm
MARIANNE NICOLSON
Musgamakw Dzawada’enuxw, Kwakwaka’wakw, b. 1969
The artist and activist, who is widely known for her monumental glassworks, is trained in traditional Kwakwaka’wakw forms and culture and contemporary gallery- and museum-based practice. Her multidisciplinary practice spans photography, painting, carving, video and large-scale installation art. While Nicolson’s work indicates spiritual content it is also political. The Seam of Heaven, composed of stylized versions of iconography drawn from traditional pictographs made by Nicolson’s ancestors, embodies references to the 1961 Columbia River Treaty as highly detrimental to Indigenous peoples.
Nicolson has exhibited widely, including at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York; Seattle Art Museum; Vancouver Art Gallery, British Columbia; and Museum Arnhem, Netherlands; among others. Large-scale public artworks are installed in Vancouver International Airport; and the Canadian embassies in Amman, Jordan, and Paris. Her work is currently on view at the USF Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa.
Pictured: Marianne Nicolson, Ḱanḱagawí (The Seam of Heaven, II), 2018, wood and etched glass, 96 x 48 inches/243.8 x 122 cm
JAAD KUUJUS (MEGHANN O’BRIEN)
Kwakwaka’wakw, Haida, and Irish, b. 1982
The Vancouver-based artist is a Northwest Coast weaver who employs the traditions of basketry, Yeil Koowu or Raven's Tail weaving, and Naaxiin (Chilkat) textiles in her practice. Jaad Kuujus, who was a professional snowboarder before devoting her life to weaving, often draws on traditional iconography, techniques and materials that may be used in ceremony. Her textile The Spirit of Shape replicates a late nineteenth-century Naaxiin (Chilkat) potlatch apron from the collection of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.
Jaad Kuujus has exhibited extensively, including at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC in Vancouver and Museum of Vancouver, British Columbia; the Textile Museum of Canada, Toronto; the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; and the Museum of World Cultures, Frankfurt.
Pictured: Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O’Brien, The Spirit of Shape, 2015-2018, Merino Wool, cashmere, cedar bark, 15 x 30 inches/38.1 x 76.2 cm
VIRGIL ORTIZ
Ortiz, Cochiti, b. 1969
The artist, who lives and works in Cochiti Pueblo, New Mexico, perpetuates Cochiti ceramic traditions while simultaneously transforming them into a contemporary vision that embraces Pueblo history and culture and merges it with his life-long interest in science fiction. His striking ceramic sculpture Recon Watchman is part of a series that brings to life futuristic, time-traveling warriors dedicated to protecting the Pueblos and ensuring their survival.
Work by Ortiz is currently on view in exhibitions at The New Mexico History Museum in Santa Fe and the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, Maine, where he was also part of the exhibition’s curatorial team.
Pictured: Virgil Ortiz, Qui, Recon Watchman, 2023, glazed raku ceramic, 44 x 35 x 26 inches/111.8 x 88.9 x 66 cm
PRESTON SINGLETARY
Tlingit, European, Filipino, b. 1963
Preston Singletary, an internationally recognized Seattle-based artist, identifies his Tlingit culture as his fundamental inspiration. His sculptures honor traditional Northwest Coast Native art and culture and as continuum, embody his understandings of Tlingit origin stories, mythologies, and spirituality. His jewel-colored glass baskets are contemporary versions of traditional Tlingit baskets historically woven by women from spruce-tree roots. Singletary imbues his baskets with the refined aesthetics of the originals, which represent his way of rethinking and re-contextualizing traditional objects.
Singletary’s work is in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum and Museum of Arts and Design, New York; Detroit Institute of Arts; and the National Museum of Scotland. His work is currently on view at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.
Pictured: Preston Singletary, Tlingit Basket Trio, 2022, blown-and-sand-carved glass;
photo by Russell Johnson
DUANE SLICK
Meskwaki (Fox of Iowa) and Ho-Chunk (Nebraska) Nations, b. 1961
The Iowa-born painter and printmaker, a self-described first-generation “Urban Indian,” is widely known for his iconic series based on Coyote, an animal fundamental to many Native American mythologies. Inspired by his collection of Mexican folk-art Coyote masks, Slick layers multiple versions of the animal’s head (working from shadows cast by the masks), one over the other at angles, such that Coyote, true to his nature, seems to be shapeshifting.
Slick’s work has been exhibited at a recent solo show at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut. In October 2023, a show opens at the Anderson Gallery at Drake University in Des Moines, which was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts grant to support a site-specific installation by Slick and Martin Smick. Slick’s work is the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; the Forge Project collection, Taghkanic, New York; The Rockwell Museum (a Smithsonian affiliate), Corning, New York; Des Moines Art Center; and RISD Museum, Providence; among others.
Pictured: Duane Slick, Locating the Third Eye, 2020, acrylic on panel, 14 x 11 inches/35.6 x 27.9 cm
BENTLY SPANG
Tsitsistas/Suhtai (Northern Cheyenne), b. 1960
The multidisciplinary artist works across video, mixed-media sculpture, performance, photography and installation. In his Montana-based practice, he creates work that challenges the persistently romanticized role of Native peoples in fabricated narratives of “The West.” Spang is perhaps best known for his Modern Warrior series of photography-based sculptures called War Shirts, one of which was part of a group show in the Michael C. Rockefeller Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, in 2015.
Spang’s work has exhibited widely, including at the Brooklyn Museum, New York; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, DC; and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri. He is represented in the collections of the Denver Art Museum; the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian; and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; among others.
Pictured: Bently Spang, Modern Warrior Series: War Shirt #8–UNCOLONIZED, 2023, Hand-etched mirrors, steel, hemp, copper, 55 x 35 x 12 inches/139.7 x 88.9 x 30.5 cm
LONNIE VIGIL
Nambé, b. 1949
Award-winning, self-taught artist Lonnie Vigil is often acknowledged as singlehandedly reviving the art of unpainted micaceous pottery. After a brief, unfulfilling stint as a financial consultant in Washington, DC, he returned home to New Mexico to pursue art. Vigil, whose great-grandmother and great-aunts were also potters, sees his practice as a collaboration between himself and the clay—he considers his vessels “living entities” infused with the presence of the Clay Mother. Using mineral-rich earth from his ancestral homeland near Santa Fe, Vigil transforms clay into contemporary sculpted vessels with vibrant surfaces. His Gourd Shape Vessel with Triangular Opening is a powerful expression of centuries old Nambé Pueblo pottery tradition.
Vigil’s work is currently on view at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in Grounded in Clay: The Spirit of Pueblo Pottery. He has exhibited widely, including at the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts; the Albuquerque Museum; and the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento. His work is in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; the Denver Art Museum; and The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri.
Pictured: Lonnie Vigil, Gourd Shaped Vessel with Triangular Opening, 2023, ceramic, 13 x 12 x 12 inches/33 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm
WILL WILSON
Diné (Navajo), b. 1969
Santa Fe-based photographer Will Wilson demonstrates the vitality of diverse Native Peoples (among others) and their thriving cultural traditions through his project, the Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange (CPIX). Wilson uses historical and digital photographic processes, performance and installation to explore the impact of colonization on Indigenous people with the purpose of cultural renewal. CPIX is a critique of the non-Native photographer Edward Curtis, who, from 1907 to 1930, created the twenty-volume set of books featuring 2,234 photogravures of Indigenous peoples, called The North American Indian.
Wilson has exhibited his work at the Denver Art Museum; Seattle Art Museum; the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman, Oklahoma; the Georgia O'Keeffe Museum, the Institute of American Indian Arts and the New Mexico Museum of Art, Santa Fe; among others. His work is currently on view at the McClung Museum of Natural History & Culture, Knoxville, Tennessee.
Pictured: Talking Tintype: Andy Everson, Citizen of the K'ómoks First Nation, Holds Photograph of his Grandmother, by Edward S. Curtis, Who Played the Role of Princess Naidain in Curtis' Film In the Land of the Headhunters, CIPX Seattle Art Museum, 2017, archival pigment print, 22 x 17 inches/55.9 x 43.2 cm
ABOUT THE CURATOR
Dr. Leesa Fanning is an independent curator, specializing in contemporary global art in all media and bringing outstanding experience to her role as a curator and advisor through more than twenty years of extensive work in the visual arts.
As Curator of Contemporary Art at The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Missouri, she curated numerous exhibitions and oversaw the contemporary art collection. Her curatorial purview also encompassed Noguchi Court, the second largest collection of Noguchi sculptures in the United States, and the Donald J. Hall Sculpture Park, a twenty-two-acre site with more than thirty modern and contemporary works.
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