A side effect of being chronically online this summer included the words “I’m just a freak, yeah” running through your mind in an infinite loop. Content warnings and obligatory critiques aside, The Idol‘s daring and glitzy approach to fashion and beauty gave a Euphoria-deprived public something to stylistically cling to. After Sam Levinson debuted his first HBO hit in 2019, sculptural eyeliner and rhinestones became everyone’s business.
In the past four years, highly stylized makeup has burst out of runways, TV screens, and movie theaters, with teens, tweens, and makeup fiends across the country whipping out eccentric looks. Productions like Daisy Jones and The Six and Everything, Everywhere All At Once have encouraged people to swap out their usual routine for more adventurous styles.
The creative minds responsible for this seismic shift deserve the spotlight more than ever, so CULTURED chatted with four makeup artists on the key role glitter, gloss, and sweat play in telling a story, onscreen or IRL. Here, Kirsten Coleman from The Idol and Euphoria, Rebecca Wachtel from Daisy Jones and The Six, Ignacia-Soto Aguilar from The Bear, and Michelle Chung from Everything Everywhere All At Once share their wisdom.
Kirsten Coleman, The Idol, Euphoria, and Don’t Worry Darling
CULTURED: Aside from the standard beauty tools and cosmetics needed to create a full look, do you have a secret ingredient you use on set?
Kirsten Coleman: Preparation H. It helps with de-puffing eyes. We also always have hand-held fans to cool actors, but my most-used item is a palo santo spray to keep my energy clean.
CULTURED: Do you notice any striking differences between working in runway/editorial makeup and makeup for a set?
Coleman: Each environment has its own level and type of stress. Usually editorial is one eight-hour day, maybe longer depending on how many looks you are doing. With film/TV, you are generally going to work 12 hours, and possibly more. It’s a game of endurance, whereas editorial can be “go go go” in a smaller time frame.
CULTURED: What product were you reaching for most on set for The Idol?
Coleman: Lip liners, a mirror, hand sanitizer, and eye drops.
CULTURED: Do you go for eye-shadow for more innocent looks and eyeliner for more intense characters or situations?
Coleman: With narrative-based work, the look has to make sense for the character and their backstory as well as where the story takes them. Geometric liner is very modern and on the forefront of fashion, so it would have to be on a character who is aligned with that world. Softer, blended looks can be for characters that are maybe more subdued or less outgoing. But that being said, I have broken all of these “rules” of thumb when the story calls for a very interesting kind of character that doesn’t adhere to these general makeup ideas. Fun fact about using rhinestones: we started using them as well as glitter on characters in season one of Euphoria because the lighting was so dark and moody we couldn’t see the makeup.
CULTURED: Do you have any predictions on what route makeup will take in the next five years?
Coleman: I believe we are headed to less structured makeup, things being less perfect and defined. Messy, smudged eye makeup that’s uneven, and more painterly applications of color.
Ignacia Soto-Aguilar, The Bear and The Hunger Games
CULTURED: What’s your secret ingredient on set?
Ignacia Soto-Aguilar: Post-It notes are great for cheating straight lines while still being gentle on skin. Also, regular tape to pick up any shimmer fallout without ruining makeup. And Pears soap! It’s a great brow soap.
CULTURED: How is working for a runway different than working on set?
Soto-Aguilar: Runway/editorial makeup is all about creating a look that complements the designer’s vision for the clothing line or the concept of a photoshoot. The makeup often has to be bold and dramatic to stand out. This can be a high-pressure environment because you’re expected to work very quickly, often on multiple models, and the makeup has to be spot on as there are no opportunities for touch-ups during the show. On the other hand, makeup for a film or TV set is about creating a look that fits a specific character and is consistent throughout the shooting, which can often take weeks or even months. This requires a deep understanding of the character and often involves research and preparation. The working hours can be long and irregular depending on the shooting schedule.
CULTURED: What is your biggest regret in terms of makeup? What would you never dare to do again?
Soto-Aguilar: Early in my career I worked on a popular network dating reality series when smudge-proof mascara was all the hype. However, smudge proof is exactly that—it’s not finale-night-tears-proof. The temperature in human tears after hours of shooting made the mascara slide off each lash hair onto the cheek of our leading lady, and it looked like I drew lashes on her with a sharpie. I was mortified. Luckily, the show runner was thrilled with how much more dramatic it made it look, and I was actually praised for it. But it taught me to never use something on camera without testing it first, even if it has glowing reviews.
CULTURED: Walk me through how you represented Carmy on The Bear’s emotions or personality.
Soto-Aguilar: Character development, personality traits, emotional state, social status, time period, health condition, symbolism and foreshadowing, character history. Makeup is a crucial tool to deliver that information to the viewer. It also may assist in informing the actor on how to deliver the character on screen if they’re a newer addition to the cast.
Carmy, for instance, we wanted the audience to be curious about him before getting to know him, and makeup had a big role in that. Benny Shields, an incredible tattoo artist, got involved during prep and designed the images for all of his trendy and highly popular tattoos. Once I had those files we were able to decide placement, the aging of each according to when he would have gotten them in his life, etc. For example, the area code on his bicep was aged more than others since we decided that was a young Carmy tattoo decision. Carmy’s tattoos get more intricate as he levels up as a chef, and viewers that know about tattoos will recognize which tattoos are more “expensive” than others. And burn scars! We designed multiple scar transfers for his arms and hands. Any legit chef knows kitchen scars are street cred, and it doesn’t get more legit than Carmy Berzatto.
CULTURED: What product were you reaching for most on set for The Bear?
Soto-Aguilar: I really owe it to Tatcha Luminous Dewy skin mist. It’s amazing for giving skin the perfect amount of glow for a starting point in the kitchen. As the scenes progress and storyline tensions elevate, Evian facial spray is an industry standard—it’s perfect for sweat touch-ups before camera rolls, and Tatcha Skin Mist’s ability at keeping Evian in place while also protecting the makeup is unmatched.
Rebecca Wachtel, Daisy Jones and The Six and Pretty Little Liars
CULTURED: Are there any tools on set that aren’t talked about enough because they aren’t as marketable or glamorous as cosmetics?
Rebecca Wachtel: Blood, sweat, and special effects of that sort. Not to get disgusting, but you have to think about things like what you’re going to use if somebody is throwing up. You go to craft service and then you put things together. For Daisy, it was all about creating a sweaty illusion. I like to try to use products that are cleaner for the skin. Jones Road’s Miracle Bomb is really nice. It gives the skin a sheen. I would put that all over for a first layer of glow, even on the guys. I really like Josie Maran’s Creamy Oil. It smells like lemon balm, very nice and clean. I use that for shine and sweat.
CULTURED: Do you notice any striking differences between red carpet makeup and makeup for a set?
Wachtel: Red carpet looks generally tend to be a little heavier—everything can be read because of the flashes. But if we’re filming for a show, it’s HD, and they’re going to be right up in the talent’s face. If you want them to look like they have no makeup on, you have to do a really flawless job. For Daisy, I wanted it to look realistic—I didn’t want the makeup to be perfect, which in some way is harder. The other makeup artists and I would often avoid touch-ups; we would leave their eyeliner even if it was messy. Something about that makes it more relatable.
CULTURED: What’s your trick for making base makeup look natural?
Wachtel: You have to approach every person with what is gonna work for them. There are certain products that are more sheer. With Riley, I used the Koh Gen Do Aqua Foundation, two different colors to brighten and contour. I used the Beauty Blender wet and really buffed it into the skin. Also lots of cream bronzers with no shimmer in them and cream blushes. And I used a highlighter from Evan Healy that’s like a cream—there’s no shimmer in it; it just makes the skin look dewy.
CULTURED: Were there specific styles you experimented with that you wouldn’t see in today’s makeup trends?
Wachtel: Facial Hair. The lead band guys couldn’t have anything too crazy because it would be distracting, but there was a lot of long sideburns action. Sometimes I would tell all the guys to come to set without shaving and we would make some really funky facial hair.
CULTURED: What product were you reaching for most while on set for Daisy Jones and The Six?
Wachtel: Chantecaille Future Skin Foundation for the three ladies. I also love Julie Hewitt’s Cheekies—they’re lip and cheek bombs. They have camellia oil in them and give a very nice sheen. Also the Endura SKIN tattoo cover.
Michelle Chung, Everything Everywhere All at Once and Booksmart
CULTURED: What’s your secret ingredient on set?
Michelle Chung: I like to be as prepared as possible on set, so I have a lot of things that aren’t necessarily cosmetics, like earplugs, a first aid kit, Advil (I get asked for this the most I think), tampons. I’m basically a traveling pharmacy. Baby wipes are always on me, for cleaning hands, changing a lip color, and so much more. Snacks are a big thing I keep in the trailer and on set. We work such long hours, and yummy snacks make the day feel better. As far as tools, every job is so different. I do keep an array of facial tools, from rollers, gua sha, facial massagers, essential oils on hot towels, and sometimes even a bowl of ice. In my trailer, I love to have a speaker. Music is really great in the morning when it’s too early to talk.
CULTURED: How do you tell a story through make-up?
Chung: In Everything Everywhere All at Once, I really wanted to make sure each look for Jobu Tupaki was completely distinct from each other in each multiverse. Her mind has been fractured into all these pieces, so I wanted each universe to stand out as its own fragment.
She wears her emotions outwardly, in her makeup, hair, and clothes, so I really wanted to go extreme with her looks. With some, I even threw in literal emotions on her face, using teardrop jewels, painting hearts on her cheeks, and painting a kind of “runny nose” look for sadness. I also pulled inspiration from warrior makeup to show her willingness to fight.
CULTURED: What product were you reaching for most on set for Everything Everywhere All at Once?
Chung: I really love any cream makeup, it’s easy to work with quickly, blends out so easily, and is so versatile. I can use it on the eyes, cheeks, and lips. The MAC paint sticks in the palette were a go-to. I also used the MAC acrylic paints that didn’t actually need any touch-up on set, which was really great in some of the fight sequences. I reached for blot papers very often. I don’t love to use a lot of powder, and blot papers leave just enough shine to show real skin, which I love.
CULTURED: What is your biggest regret in terms of makeup? What would you never dare to do again?
Chung: I was a product of the ‘90s, so I over-tweezed my own eyebrows. I definitely regret doing that!
CULTURED: Do you have any predictions on what route makeup will take in the next five years?
Chung: I’m already seeing a return to the ‘90s, early 2000s—more satin and matte finishes, a lot of neutrals and browns. I’m also starting to see neons, but less glittery and blinged out, more just bright and flat. Bright pastels might be next as well. I do love that people are becoming way more experimental with their looks, so I hope that trend continues!
As the summer winds to a close and full-time New Yorkers prepare to wrap up their seasonal travels, the moment is ripe for a last hurrah—a weekend getaway or staycation that offers a chance to take in the city at its quietest, while golden hour is still at its prime. The Standard New York’s East Village outpost—the cozy sibling to the Standard’s downtown High Line location—is the perfect locale for an escape or an escapade, striking the delicate balance between luxurious comfort and cocktail-fueled fun.
The hotel, with its sloping and soaring facade, has been a mainstay of the city’s skyline since 2008, and has developed a reputation for eccentric decor and state-of-the-art amenities. Those in search of respite will love The Garden, the full-service restaurant at the heart of the space, which offers guests a chance to relax against a backdrop of twinkling lights and lush greenery.
For something with a bit more buzz, try Café Standard, where lunch is served street-level, presenting a tableau of city life—a perfect place to grab brunch before jumping into the foot traffic of the East Village. After a day in the city, grab a cocktail to kick off the night at NOBAR, a playfully campy watering hole with a perpetual slate of DJs and performers on rotation.
While the city views on display from the rooms of The Standard, East Village are tantalizing enough, the hotel’s interiors are adorned with locally-commissioned works to please the toughest critics. Recently, The Standard commissioned the multidisciplinary interior designer Alex Proba, who previously collaborated with the hotel’s Ibiza outpost, to redesign the iconic red-lipped pillows that adorn each of its spacious rooms—incorporating pops of electric orange and magenta.
Also on view in the space is a mural commissioned by Ukrainian artist WAONE. From Legend to Discovery, 2022, was painted on The Garden’s wall prior to the hotel’s Sunflower Gala, an event that raised money in support of Ukraine in the wake of the Russian invasion.
Most recently, Rahm Bowen, a New York-based artist whose work explores Black and queer experiences, was tapped to create Beyond the Horizon of Time, 2023, a mural that adorns the outside of NO BAR. The mural’s constellation of figures, rendered in practically every color of the rainbow, set the tone for a night in the hustle and bustle of the city.
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Ada Deer, who advocated for Native American rights both in and out of government, lobbying for tribal self-determination in the 1970s and later shaping federal policy as the first woman to lead the Bureau of Indian Affairs, died Aug. 15 at a hospice center in Fitchburg, Wis., a suburb of Madison. She was 88.
Her godson Ben Wikler, the chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, confirmed her death but did not cite a cause.
Ms. Deer, a member of the Menominee tribe in Wisconsin, was a tireless champion for American Indians, campaigning on behalf of Indigenous people while also working as a social worker and educator. “Ada would often talk about how most people wait around for someone else to do something — and you didn’t have to wait, you could just go for it,” Wikler said in a phone interview. “She lived that out all through her life.”
Beginning in the early 1970s, Ms. Deer campaigned to reverse the policy known as termination, in which the federal government disbanded tribes as sovereign entities, ostensibly to force Native Americans to assimilate into mainstream society.
The program proved devastating to tribes such as the Menominee, which numbered some 3,300 people before the Menominee Termination Act took effect in 1961. State and federal funding dried up, schools closed, a hospital was shuttered and the tribe’s property was transferred to a state corporation. Menominee Indian Reservation became Menominee County, the smallest and soon the poorest county in the state.
“It was a cultural, economic, and political disaster that struck deep into the hearts of the Menominee — a violation of our treaties and a betrayal of the government’s responsibilities to our tribe,” Ms. Deer later said.
In 1970, while in her mid-30s, she partnered with other organizers to launch an advocacy group called Determination of Rights and Unity for Menominee Stockholders, or DRUMS, which fought to prevent the sale of tribal land. With support from the Native American Rights Fund and Wisconsin Judicare, a legal aid organization, she took the fight to Washington, helping to develop and promote legislation that would restore federal recognition of the Menominee.
“Mainly, I want to show people who say nothing can be done in this society that it just isn’t so,” she told The Washington Post in 1973. “You don’t have to collapse just because there’s federal law in your way. Change it!”
Later that year, President Richard M. Nixon signed the Menominee Restoration Act, bringing federal services back to the Menominee and restoring tribal government. Ms. Deer was widely credited with spearheading the legislation — “I don’t know anyone who could have brought that bill so far so fast,” Rep. Lloyd Meeds (D-Wash.), the chair of the Indian affairs subcommittee, said at the time — and became the first woman to lead the Menominee Nation, serving as chair from 1974 to 1976.
Ms. Deer went on to teach at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, where she lectured on social work and helped found the school’s American Indian studies program, which she later directed. She also ventured into politics, running twice for Wisconsin secretary of state and, in 1992, becoming the first Native American woman in the state to run for U.S. Congress.
Campaigning on a platform that called for universal health insurance and cuts to defense spending, she stunned Wisconsin political analysts with her Democratic primary victory over state lawmaker David Clarenbach. Addressing her supporters in a victory speech, she declared, “I’ve been waiting a long time to say this: Me, nominee!” The line, a riff on her tribe’s name, appeared on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal the next day.
As in her earlier races, Ms. Deer was ultimately unsuccessful, losing the general election to Rep. Scott Klug, the Republican incumbent, who got about 63 percent of the vote. But the campaign helped raise her profile, and in 1993 President Bill Clinton appointed her assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs. The position made her the head of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, an agency with some 12,000 employees, a budget of more than $1.5 billion and a role shaping federal policy for more than 500 tribes across the country, including through the management of schools, police departments, social services and natural-resource rights.
The bureau had been accused for years of incompetence and mismanagement, and Ms. Deer was not entirely successful in shedding that reputation. But she drew praise for granting greater authority to tribal governments and repairing relationships with Native American leaders, and was credited with defending the agency from attacks by budget-slashing Republicans in Congress. Admirers also noted that shortly after her confirmation, the agency reclassified a number of Indigenous Alaskan villages as tribes, granting them the same rights and privileges as other Native groups.
“Ada has been the catalyst for significant changes in the way the Department approaches Indian Affairs,” Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt said when Ms. Deer announced her resignation in 1997. “Her priority has been on righting historic wrongs.” Because of Ms. Deer’s efforts to shift authority to tribal governments, he added, “tribes are better equipped and more empowered than ever before.”
The oldest of five children, Ada Elizabeth Deer was born in Keshena, a town on the Menominee Reservation in northern Wisconsin, on Aug. 7, 1935. She grew up in a one-room log cabin without running water or electricity.
Her father, a Menominee, worked at a lumber mill and was an alcoholic, according to Ms. Deer, with a raging temper that she traced to his childhood. His mother had died during the 1918 flu epidemic, and he had been sent to a Catholic boarding school for Native children, where he was punished for speaking the tribe’s language and maintaining ties to its culture.
Ms. Deer’s mother came from a White Quaker family in Philadelphia and left home to work as a nurse with the BIA. She went on to embrace her husband’s Menominee culture and taught Ms. Deer to do the same, bringing her to tribal meetings when she was as young as 4.
Her mother also sought to introduce her to the wider world. Ms. Deer studied at public schools in Shawano and Milwaukee, because the reservation had no high school of its own, and won a Native American beauty contest as a teenager. The prize was a cameo appearance in a 1954 western, “The Battle of Rogue River,” although the Hollywood production didn’t go quite as she expected: Makeup artists decided she didn’t look the part of a Native American and spent two hours painting her face, according to an account in The Post.
Ms. Deer received a bachelor’s degree in social work from the University of Wisconsin in 1957, becoming the first Menominee to graduate from the school. In 1961, she became the first Native American to receive a master’s in social work from Columbia.
Over the next decade, Ms. Deer worked as a social worker in New York City and Minneapolis; served in Puerto Rico with the Peace Corps; and spent three years in Minnesota as a community service coordinator for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. She was studying at the University of Wisconsin Law School when she dropped out to focus on her advocacy work with the Menominee.
Ms. Deer, who is survived by two sisters, later worked on prison reform in Wisconsin. She never married and had no children, “but she was everyone’s auntie,” said her godson Wikler, with an extended family that grew to include first-time political candidates whom she would join on the campaign trail, offering support while knocking on voters’ doors.
By then, any anxieties she had from her early days running for public office had disappeared. “I speak up. I speak out,” she said in a 2018 interview with the University of Wisconsin. “It’s not like I plotted and planned. I just had this general goal. I want to do and I want to be and I want to help. And I’ve been able to do it.
“People think you’re born this way,” she continued, “but you create your way as you go along. No. Your life evolves.”
What started as a dream to build an Indigenous community that challenges ideas of contemporary art and colonial categorization has resulted in a catalogue featuring more than 60 Indigenous artists. The book explores what it means to combine different identities and methods of making art across the globe.
Nearly 20 years ago, Jeffrey Gibson, of Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee descent, began dreaming of an anthology that showcased contemporary Indigenous creatives across various mediums while moving beyond the page, offering a counterexample to earlier publications he had seen.
According to Gibson, within the art world’s institutions, there is a history of pervasive racism, which has led to an industry that often tries to confine artists into one specific box or label their work according to identity, traditions, or their traumas.
He noted that the industry is often attached to diversity initiatives, causing many Indigenous artists to question whether their participation hinged on who they were instead of what they made.
“The culture that I’ve grown up with surrounding Indigenous people felt like the boundaries were drawn so tightly as to what we’re allowed to do, who we’re supposed to be, and what we’re supposed to look like. I’ve never fit that model myself, and I have always been drawn to other Native people who also don’t fit that model,” says Gibson.
“So much of the 20th-century writing around Native artists is almost about justifying their work and relationship to western art history, and explaining why it’s Native, and often trying to draw a direct line to precedents and beadwork, or precedents and materials or in painting.”
He added that this approach is often restrictived an limits the freedom of artists to express themselves and showcase what their Indigeneity means to them instead.
“I wanted to make a book that did that,” he said.
Gibson and his team spent two and a half years reaching out to an ever-evolving group of Indigenous creatives to be a part of this project.
They then worked to present their art in a large-format book with beautiful images that includes thoughts from curators, poets and writers – all while infusing the cultural and distinctly different identities of communities.
And now, Gibson’s dream is coming to life with the release of An Indigenous Present, published by DelMonico Books and Big NDN Press, on Aug. 22, 2023.
This collection gathers more than 60 Indigenous contemporary artists, including many Indigenous artists from “Canada,” such as Dana Claxton, Laakkuluk Williamson Bathory, Rebecca Belmore, Beau Dick, Wally Dion, Korina Emmerich, Brian Jungen, Meryl McMaster, Caroline Monnet, Audie Murray, Arielle Twist, and Zoon a.k.a. Daniel Glen Monkman.
“An Indigenous Present has emerged as much out of my dissatisfaction with the circumstances I have navigated during my own career as it has from witnessing artists who proudly identify as Indigenous carve out their own creative spaces and, collectively, manifest both local and international contexts for their artworks,” Gibson writes in the introduction.
He spoke to IndigiNews by phone from his office, a turn-of-the-century schoolhouse in the Hamlet of Claverack, just outside of Hudson, New York, where the original classrooms have been converted into sewing rooms, painting rooms, woodshops, a kitchen, and more.
There, Gibson created a shared studio space with other artists in the surrounding area. This type of environment is exactly the sort of energy Gibson was looking for with An Indigenous Present, as sharing and reciprocity have always been an ethos within Indigenous culture.
“I wanted this collection to be about people whose work I’m excited by that I’ve casually come across over the last 25 years, but it’s not really that casual because Native art is always a destination. It’s the world I’ve paid attention to and the people I have been inspired by,” says Gibson.
“I wished for a different kind of art system, one that looked at and related to artworks from the cultural perspective of their Indigenous makers. I knew I wasn’t alone in wanting these things,” he says in the intro of the book.
Look at any curated collection of Indigenous artists from the past, and what you’ll mostly see is the influence of traditional design or academic essays illustrated with artwork by Indigenous makers.
What the creators in An Indigenous Present are making moves past those distilled perspectives, allowing for the pieces to be in conversation with one another rather than an addition to the curator’s thoughts.
And it is this that Gibson hopes to interrogate, stating that “other Indigenous artists were contributing to – and authoring – new conversations that challenged the outdated perceptions of who we are and what we make” already.
He said that the underlying message is that being Indigenous is instilled within the creator, and within these intersections of different identities, this collection aims to “create a visual experience that foregrounds diverse approaches to concept, form and medium as well as connection, influence, conversation and collaboration.”
“We are spread far and wide, and we are all very different. So you’re going to talk to one person who is Inuit, and they’re going to talk to you about materials and intention in one way. And then you’re going to talk to a Pueblo person, and they’re going to share something completely different,” he shares.
With a history of displacement, banning cultural practices, and a global industry of fake Indigenous art, these artists are working hard to reimagine a new space that binds the past, present, and future. And since the lifting of the potlatch ban in 1951, Indigenous creators have, in fact, been revitalizing and redefining their presence in the art world while expressing creative and cultural sovereignty.
Working alongside many curators over the years, Gibson spent a lot of time thinking about how Indigenous artists have been presented historically. They often showcased it based on the region or generation of the artist, or whether it was traditional or contemporary, but with this collection, he wanted to consider the contents of the artwork he was looking at.
“I really want this book to help contextualize, even if there’s an artist who isn’t in the book, this book could serve to give context to their work,” he explains.
Gibson and his team made over 60 virtual studio visits with Indigenous artists before sitting down to organize the content in a way that didn’t have to section artists into areas such as “textiles,” “painting,” or “weaving.”
Working with managing editor Jenelle Porter and the graphic design studio OTAMI-is based in Tiohtià:ke (Montréal), they had many conversations about art, concepts, materials, community, the art scene, and more.
“I wanted to make a lavish picture book (“sexy” was a word I used a lot to describe this project) that invites an audience to consider the creative and conceptual spaces artists need to think freely, disrupt the flow, take chances, make mistakes, and even fail in the process of creating something new,” Gibson shares in the introduction of the book.
It was also crucial for Gibson to incorporate Indigenous humour into this collection because it is rooted within the culture and has always been a form of survival.
“This book includes many artworks that make me laugh with their cleverness and sarcasm, made by artists like Rebecca Belmore, Lewis deSoto, James Luna, New Red Order, Wendy Red Star, and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie, among others,” Gibson writes in the intro.
“These artworks operate in the realm of a knowing wink from someone who understands what it is like to be Indigenous in the 20th and 21st centuries.”
One important intention from the beginning was the creation of an equitable distribution plan, which asked each artist to share up to four addresses of places where they want to send the book free of charge, creating low-barrier access to the book within their communities and in places like independent, Indigenous run spaces and public libraries. He shares that the book has already gone into its second printing before its release.
“An Indigenous Present is not meant to be the definitive account on the subject of Native and Indigenous art and artists. Not at all,” he wrote.
“There is so much work to be done, so many histories to recount and collect. And most importantly, there are so many emerging artists to nurture and support.”
