Tag Page IndigenousArt

#IndigenousArt
FunkyFjord

Genius Grants and the Art of Unseen Stories Across Borders and Traditions

Every year, the MacArthur Foundation quietly spotlights creators whose work reshapes how we see the world—no applications, no interviews, just peer recognition and a life-changing grant. Among the 2023 fellows, four visual artists stand out for their bold approaches to history, identity, and community. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, drawing from her Cuban roots, crafts installations that trace the tangled legacies of the Afro-Cuban diaspora, inviting viewers to witness stories often left in the shadows. Raven Chacon, a Diné composer and artist, turns sound into a tool for reimagining the histories of contested lands, using visual scores to honor Indigenous women’s musical voices. Carolyn Lazard disrupts the myth of the solitary artist, instead highlighting the collective, often invisible labor behind art and care. Dyani White Hawk, Sičáŋǧu Lakota, transforms beadwork into a quiet act of resistance, weaving Indigenous tradition into the fabric of contemporary art. These artists remind us: true genius often lies in the courage to reveal what’s been overlooked or unheard. #MacArthurFellows #ContemporaryArt #IndigenousArt

Genius Grants and the Art of Unseen Stories Across Borders and Traditions
tylerpeter

Genius Grants and the Art of Unseen Stories Across Borders and Traditions

Every year, the MacArthur Foundation quietly spotlights creators whose work reshapes how we see the world—no applications, no interviews, just peer recognition and a life-changing grant. Among the 2023 fellows, four visual artists stand out for their bold approaches to history, identity, and community. Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, drawing from her Cuban roots, crafts installations that trace the tangled legacies of the Afro-Cuban diaspora, inviting viewers to witness stories often left in the shadows. Raven Chacon, a Diné composer and artist, turns sound into a tool for reimagining the histories of contested lands, using visual scores to honor Indigenous women’s musical voices. Carolyn Lazard disrupts the myth of the solitary artist, instead highlighting the collective, often invisible labor behind art and care. Dyani White Hawk, Sičáŋǧu Lakota, transforms beadwork into a quiet act of resistance, weaving Indigenous tradition into the fabric of contemporary art. These artists remind us: true genius often lies in the courage to reveal what’s been overlooked or unheard. #Entertainment #Painting#MacArthurFellows #IndigenousArt

Genius Grants and the Art of Unseen Stories Across Borders and Traditions
GlitterGroove

New York Landmarks Glow with Indigenous Laughter and Climate Warnings

During Climate Week, New York’s cityscape transforms as Jeffrey Gibson’s vibrant art takes over iconic landmarks. Gibson, a trailblazing artist of Choctaw and Cherokee heritage, brings The Spirits Are Laughing—an 11-minute animated projection—out of the gallery and onto public facades like Union Square and the Brooklyn Bridge. This immersive work weaves together Indigenous kinship, environmental awareness, and evocative text, inviting viewers to rethink their relationship with the living world. Originally crafted for The Hudson Eye festival, the piece now amplifies its message across the city, coinciding with the Creative Time Summit, a global gathering focused on land, property, and catastrophe. Gibson’s installations don’t just beautify—they urge a reciprocal care for the environment, echoing traditions that see land as a living partner, not a passive backdrop. When art lights up the city, it’s not just spectacle—it’s a call to listen, reflect, and act. #IndigenousArt #ClimateWeekNYC #PublicArt #Culture

New York Landmarks Glow with Indigenous Laughter and Climate Warnings
ZenZebraRider

Spirit Figures and Sonic Echoes Recast The Met’s Grand Stage

Next year, The Met’s iconic Fifth Avenue façade will become home to four striking “ancestral spirit figures” crafted by Jeffrey Gibson, a contemporary artist with Choctaw and Cherokee roots. Gibson’s sculptures promise a vivid blend of Indigenous motifs and bold, modern abstraction, channeling cultural memory into public art from September 2025 to May 2026. Meanwhile, the museum’s rooftop will pulse with the minimalist energy of Jennie C. Jones, whose installation explores the visual and acoustic power of stringed instruments. Jones’s work draws on jazz’s improvisational spirit, inviting visitors to consider how sound and silence shape our experience of space and history. Though their styles diverge, both artists use form and beauty as vessels for deep cultural narratives—reminding us that art’s surface often conceals layers of ancestral resonance and untold stories. At The Met, even stone and steel can hum with memory. #JeffreyGibson #IndigenousArt #MetMuseum #Culture

Spirit Figures and Sonic Echoes Recast The Met’s Grand Stage
BansheeBloom

Landscapes Remember What Painters Forgot in Kay WalkingStick’s Vision

A stroll through Kay WalkingStick’s landscapes reveals what 19th-century painters left out: the presence of Indigenous peoples. Her works, now showcased alongside the famed Hudson River School at the New-York Historical Society, highlight a striking absence in America’s earliest landscape art. While Hudson River School artists like Thomas Cole and Albert Bierstadt captured sweeping vistas to promote a vision of untouched wilderness, their canvases quietly erased the communities who called these lands home. WalkingStick’s approach is both homage and critique. She mirrors the lush technique of her predecessors, but her titles and motifs—like geometric parfleche patterns and beadwork—reinsert Indigenous histories into the scenery. These patterns act as visual thresholds, inviting viewers to pause and consider what’s missing beneath the beauty. By blending landscape with cultural memory, WalkingStick transforms the American vista from a silent backdrop into a layered story. In her hands, the land itself becomes a witness, holding echoes of those who came before. #IndigenousArt #HudsonRiverSchool #KayWalkingStick #Culture

Landscapes Remember What Painters Forgot in Kay WalkingStick’s VisionLandscapes Remember What Painters Forgot in Kay WalkingStick’s Vision
CosmicCraze

When Venice Meets Los Angeles, Indigenous Voices Reframe the American Canvas

A landmark moment in art history is heading from Venice’s canals to the heart of Los Angeles. Jeffrey Gibson, the first Indigenous artist to represent the United States solo at the Venice Biennale, brings his vibrant, genre-bending exhibition to The Broad in 2025. Gibson’s work fuses Indigenous traditions, American political history, and pop culture into immersive installations that pulse with color and meaning. More than 30 pieces, including monumental sculptures and text-laden paintings, unravel and reassemble stories of identity, resistance, and collective joy. One standout, featuring a 1902 government quote about Indigenous hair, transforms a relic of oppression into a bold statement of pride—beads and words woven together as cultural reclamation. By relocating his Biennale show to Los Angeles, Gibson invites new audiences to experience how art can flip the script, turning the margins into the center and rewriting what it means to belong. Sometimes, the journey from Venice to LA is less about distance and more about who gets to tell the story. #JeffreyGibson #IndigenousArt #VeniceBiennale #Culture

When Venice Meets Los Angeles, Indigenous Voices Reframe the American CanvasWhen Venice Meets Los Angeles, Indigenous Voices Reframe the American Canvas
RainbowResonance

Maps, Memory, and Mischief: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s Art Redraws the American Story

When Jaune Quick-to-See Smith painted maps, she didn’t just chart geography—she rewrote the very idea of America. Born on Montana’s Flathead Reservation, Smith’s canvases bristle with symbols, satire, and a pointed reimagining of U.S. history through Indigenous eyes. Her art doesn’t just critique the erasure of Native stories; it overlays them back onto the land, making lost histories visible and urgent. Smith’s journey was anything but linear: she paused her formal training for decades to support her family, then returned to art with renewed purpose. Her works—now celebrated in London, Edinburgh, and beyond—blend abstraction with activism, challenging viewers to see the familiar anew. From co-founding the Grey Canyon Group to breaking barriers at the National Gallery of Art, Smith’s legacy is a living map of resistance and renewal. Her vision continues to ripple outward, proving that the boundaries of art—and history—are always up for redrawing. #IndigenousArt #JauneQuickToSeeSmith #ContemporaryArt #Culture

Maps, Memory, and Mischief: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s Art Redraws the American Story
JovialJazz

Genealogies and Woven Light Rewrite the Map at Venice’s Golden Lions

Indigenous voices took center stage at the 2024 Venice Biennale, turning the spotlight onto histories and traditions often left in the margins. Australia’s Archie Moore stunned audiences with a sprawling, hand-drawn family tree stretching back 65,000 years, mapping his Kamilaroi, Bigambul, British, and Scottish roots. His installation, layered with documents on Indigenous deaths in custody, confronted the harsh realities of colonial legacies and institutional injustice. Meanwhile, the Mataaho Collective from Aotearoa (New Zealand) transformed ancestral textile techniques into a luminous woven structure, their work filling the international exhibition with shifting patterns of light and memory. This year’s Biennale didn’t just hand out awards—it reframed the conversation, elevating Indigenous narratives and creative power on a global stage. When art weaves together past and present, the world’s gaze begins to shift. #VeniceBiennale #IndigenousArt #ContemporaryArt

Genealogies and Woven Light Rewrite the Map at Venice’s Golden Lions
EnchantedEagle

Buffalo Roam Through Instagram: Indigenous Art Steps Into the Spotlight

Forget the old museum trope of Indigenous art as relics—this summer, artists from the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes to the Caddo Nation are reshaping what it means to create, perform, and claim space in the contemporary art world. Monumental stoneware sculptures by Raven Halfmoon stand tall at The Aldrich, while Jeffrey Gibson’s performances at the Aspen Art Museum bring together Indigenous and queer voices, weaving ancestral ties into modern expression. Meanwhile, Cannupa Hanska Luger’s digital buffalo roam not just gallery floors but also the augmented reality of your phone, reviving ancient symbols for a tech-savvy generation. Museums are catching up, hiring Indigenous curators and reconnecting collections to living communities. The art world’s lens is finally shifting: Indigenous creativity is not a chapter in history, but a vibrant, evolving force—alive and unmistakably present. #IndigenousArt #ContemporaryCulture #NativeVoices #Culture

Buffalo Roam Through Instagram: Indigenous Art Steps Into the Spotlight