Cannupa Hanska Luger’s Incendiary (2023), a vibrantly colored, large-scale tipi work from a recent series that explores the adaptability and versatility of the nomadic structure as a metaphor for the resilience of Indigenous peoples in the face of settler-colonial violence, is now on view at Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt).

The painted and shaped canvas is a significant addition to the museum’s contemporary art collection and furthers the museum’s efforts to collect and display art that reflects a diversity of voices from the Southwest region and Arizona.

Incendiary by Luger was acquired by the museum with funds from the Men’s Arts Council, a support group dedicated to supporting acquisitions, exhibitions and education and engagement programming. It is on view now in the Katz Wing for Modern Art.

“Adding Incendiary by Cannupa Hanska Luger into the collection of Phoenix Art Museum represents a significant step forward in growing contemporary Indigenous perspectives within the PhxArt Collection,” said Jeremy Mikolajczak, the museum’s Sybil Harrington director and CEO.

“The work is a wonderful example of how Luger uses Indigenous knowledge to challenge histories and stereotypes and, in dialogue with other works, assertively demonstrates a reframing and repositioning of historical narratives of Native peoples. Incendiary joins other paintings and multimedia works in our contemporary art holdings by contemporary Indigenous artists such as Fritz Scholder and Steven Yazzie.”

Luger was born in 1979 on Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota. Now based in New Mexico, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota and European heritage.

By incorporating wide-ranging media, from ceramics, steel and fiber to video and repurposed materials, Luger creates monumental installations and sculptures, performances and wall works that attempt to reframe and reclaim 21st-century narratives about Indigenous cultures and identities. His work unites historical references and tradition with contemporary concerns, all to imagine and dream of Indigenous futures.

Luger is a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow and a recipient of a 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft. In 2021, he was named a GRIST Fixer, and in 2020, he was named a Creative Capital Fellow and a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, among other previous awards and accolades. Luger has exhibited nationally and internationally at institutions such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gardiner Museum, Kunsthal KAdE, ASU Art Museum, Berkeley Art Museum, New Orleans Museum of Art, Mesa Arts Center and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights.

Incendiary (2023) is one of 10 canvases from Luger’s tipi series, a recent investigation of painting. For the Plains people, tipis represent a nomadic lifestyle, defined by patterns of migration that mirror the movements of buffalo herds. The structures were often made from the skins of hunted buffalo, making them part of the land and the humans who constructed them simultaneously. Tipis also adapt to the land on which they exist, similar to how Indigenous peoples have adapted over centuries of struggle and ongoing conflict with colonizers.

As part of his tipi series, Luger transformed the word “tipi” into an acronym—Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure. The acronym suggests that the structure can cross time and space, even into future realms of existence, thus solidifying its status as a testament to Indigenous resilience and innovation.

Incendiary, like other canvases from the body of work, features recognizable graphic forms of stars and oversized cartoon eyes with curled eyelashes, which are drawn from specific historical references. The eyes reference stereotypical cartoon characterizations of Indigenous peoples in early animations, while the overall pop aesthetic refers to historical Air Force nose art. This type of nose art first appeared on British Royal Air Force Tomahawks during World War II and was later adopted by U.S. forces to adorn US P-40s, or Warhawks.

By appropriating this imagery and placing it onto a Native nomadic structure, Luger reflects on the ability of Indigenous peoples, their knowledge and their technologies to withstand the colonial violence and aggression these designs represent. It is also a reflection on how Native American cultural motifs have been appropriated by Western popular culture for centuries.

Learn more about the artist at garthgreenan.com. For more information about PhxArt Museum, visit phxart.org.

Atim Annette Oton is a native of Nigeria, on the continent of Africa. What may come as a surprise to many: she never skips breakfast, and aims to eat the standard of three meals a day.

Her father was from the south east of Nigeria from a town called Eket in Akwa Ibom State. Her mother was born in Harlem, and is of Trinidadian and Jamaican descent. Oton is the curator at Calabar Art Gallery in Harlem, named after the Nigerian city of Calabar.

The greatest influences on her path were her parents, along with a mentor. “My parents — they lived life fully and made me think the world was mine as a Black African child living in Nigeria and spending summers in Europe and the US,” she stated.

“One of my mentors was the prolific Black architect Max Bond, who I later worked for when I was in architecture. He was the one who taught me the philosophy that ‘Architecture is Revolution’, which I adapted to ‘Design is Revolution’ and ‘Business is Community,’” she added.

Oton’s parents were focused on education as a path to success. An act of kindness she remembered was when her parents would pay to send people to school.

“My mother was focused on artists and supported their work by buying. Acts of kindness in Nigeria I saw were usually focused around providing access for others – to gain employment or to eat without paying for meals,” she continued.

She said that since coming to New York, she has seen residents being supportive in their local neighborhoods, doing simple things like cleaning up streets and supporting local businesses before and after the pandemic.

Growing up in Nigeria, her hobbies included tennis and chess. Now, she does a lot more reading.

Other ways that Oton has made contributions to her NYC community now include serving 13 years on Community Board 8, which represents Prospect Heights, Crown Heights and Weeksville.  Most of those were spent as the chair of the Economic Development Committee.

She is big on purposeful activities in the community, such as the Harlem Arts Stroll and Crown Heights Arts Stroll to bring the local community into art galleries and spaces. Additionally, she was also involved with the Crown Heights Job Fair to bring employers and jobs to community residents. “Both are about Economic impact for the community and businesses who participate,” she added.

In regards to creating opportunities for African, African American, and Caribbean communities, Oton is “very interested in issues we are having in workforce shortage, hiring gaps in jobs and inadequate training for the paradigm shift that is coming and is currently happening as technology takes over.”

It is clear that since the pandemic, these issues have escalated. “We need to expand the numbers, create more strategies to give people varied skills and stop the unemployment numbers in the African, African American, and Caribbean communities,” Oton continued.

Oton wants to have a way to make this change in the workforce, so job fairs are the start. She will be taking part in the Bed-Stuy Job Fair, being held on Sept. 19 this year at Marcy Plaza. Find details on the Job Fair here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/bed-stuy-job-fair-tickets-648134817687.

Oton said  her legacy “will revolve around art and what Calabar Gallery does for Black artists locally and globally via our exhibitions in and out of our gallery, in art auctions, art fairs, art licensing opportunities and through our residencies.”

For the gallery, Oton states “the legacy is about providing places, opportunities and support for artists to innovate, sustain, grow and expand their work and careers.”

Ways the gallery is doing this include the creation of 3 Social Justice Art Residencies: one at coLAB Arts in New Jersey, the Grenada Arts Residency based out of Cannes Brulees Rum Factory in Grenada, and one with the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts in Manhattan.

Learn more about the residencies here: https://calabargallery.com/art-residencies/.

For the younger generation, it’s about bringing more young people to art through local art strolls and the art projects we expose them to. “It’s also about growing Black Women Art Collectors — an initiative to increase the number of collectors, particularly the next generation,”  she added.

To stay updated on the work of Oton and Calabar Art Gallery, those who are interested can follow the gallery on social media, and subscribe to their newsletter, which can be found here: https://calabargallery.com/.