Aboriginal artists win prestigious Wynne and Sulman prizes
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Q&A: First Nations Artist Terrance Houle on Honoring Late Mother with Newest Work
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- By Kaili Berg
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June 05, 2024
Indigenous artist Terrance Houle, a member of the Kainai Nation, is set to bring his latest work, “Dance/Ipásskaa,” to the Luminato Festival in Toronto from June 7 to June 17.Houle has been immersed in the world of dance since childhood. His late mother, Maxine Weasel Fat (Naatoyiipotaki/Sacred Soaring Bird Woman), played a pivotal role in this journey by meticulously crafting traditional regalia, including his sister’s elk tooth dress and his daughter’s jingle dress.
Houle has transformed these family treasures into a dynamic photographic mural titled “Dance/Ipásskaa”, which captures the essence of these garments in motion, honoring his mother’s artistry and inviting viewers to experience the Kainai Nation’s heritage through his family’s lens.
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The mural will be displayed on the Bay Street facade of Brookfield Place in downtown Toronto throughout the 11-day festival, providing a stunning visual experience for festivalgoers and passersby.
Houle’s work spans subversive, humorous, and solemn artistic expressions, often exploring themes of history, colonization, Aboriginal identity, and representation in popular culture. He uses various media, including photography, painting, installation, performance, music, video and film.
Native News Online spoke with Houle about his latest work, “Dance/Ipásskaa”, the emotions behind his art and the challenges he faced creating it. Houle discusses honoring his late mother’s regalia work, overcoming challenges through cultural practices, and his ongoing project “Ghost Days,” exploring themes of the afterlife.
Can you tell us a bit about your journey as an artist and how your heritage has influenced your work?
I began making art over 30 years ago, starting in high school, where I explored photography and animation. Growing up in Calgary, Alberta, I was deeply influenced by the punk rock and skateboarding scene, which has significantly shaped my artistic style.
My upbringing played a crucial role in my development as an artist. My family was heavily involved in powwow ceremonies, and my mother was a master of beadwork and leatherwork, making regalia for powwow dancing. My father, a veteran who served in the Middle East in the 1970s, also contributed to my understanding of tradition and ceremony. I grew up immersed in both Indigenous culture and the punk scene, which gave me a unique perspective that I bring into my art.
Can you describe the piece you created for Luminato and the emotions and messages behind it?
The piece is deeply personal and honors my late mother, Sacred Soaring Bird Woman. It’s based on her regalia work, showcasing elements of dance and movement, reflecting the vibrancy and tradition of our culture.
The mural includes sections of her beadwork and textiles, symbolizing the community’s dance and the support that surrounds and uplifts us. It’s meant to show that our ancestors and community are always with us, encouraging us to step into the world with confidence and pride.
What challenges did you encounter while bringing this piece to life, and how did you overcome them?
The biggest challenge was dealing with my mother’s illness and her passing. She battled multiple myeloma for nearly 18 years, and her strength and resilience inspired this piece.
Another challenge was selecting the right photographs from the thousands I took. With the help of a good friend, we narrowed them down to about 18 images. The most difficult part was not being able to install the piece before my mother passed away, but she did see a mock-up and gave her approval, which means the world to me.
To overcome these challenges, I relied heavily on our cultural practices and ceremonies. I did a lot of smudging and leaned into my upbringing, drawing strength from my father’s Sundance rituals and the teachings of my community. These practices helped me process my grief and focus on completing the piece. I truly believe my mother’s presence was with me throughout this process, guiding me to finish the mural in her honor.
How do you hope the viewers will engage with and interpret your mural at Luminato?
I hope viewers will feel the motion and emotion of the piece. It’s meant to convey a sense of community and support, much like a powwow where everyone is welcome to dance and celebrate together. I want people to see the vibrancy of our culture and feel the presence of the dancers and the community surrounding them. The mural is a tribute to the strength and resilience of our people, and I hope it inspires viewers to appreciate the depth of our traditions and the love that binds us together.
Looking ahead, do you have any future projects or different things you’re excited to explore?
I have a project called Ghost Days, which I started in 2015. It’s inspired by my mother’s illness and our cultural perspectives on the afterlife, which we call the Great Sand Hills in the north of Alberta. My mom used to joke about being at the Great Sand Hills casino in the sky because she loved going to the casino. Our culture, the Blackfoot and the Ojibwa, have a rich tradition of humor and storytelling, and that spirit infuses this project.
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Northern Indigenous artists to attend Santa Fe Indian Market
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A cohort of 10 Indigenous artists from Yukon and Northwest Territories will head to New Mexico later this summer to attend a prestigious art market.
The Yukon First Nations Culture and Tourism Association and Northwest Territories Arts Program partnered with the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts to bring the cohort to the Santa Fe Indian Market in New Mexico.
The organizations said in a release there has been “minimal participation” from Yukon and NWT artists at past festivals.
They said the goal is for northern Indigenous artists to get the chance to show, sell and experience the market.
The century-old market is held annually and draws an estimated 100,000 people. Upwards of 800 Indigenous artists from across North America attend the market each year.
Its website describes it as “the largest and most prestigious Native American market in the world.”
Whitehorse based artist and fashion designer Randi Nelson, who is St’uxwtéws, is one of the Yukon artists selected for the cohort.
“It’s the first cohort ever in 102 years of the market. It’s pretty exciting that they did this collaboration,” she said. “I understand Santa Fe to be a really big milestone in people’s career.
“It’s really prestigious and definitely the top artists are accepted to go.”
Nelson said the market has strict requirements stipulating what artists can sell. She said it uses a grading system to ensure all items are original and made with natural materials.
“The more you prepare and make the materials yourself, like your own earring hooks, you will get more points and more value,” she said. “Also, it encourages original art. There’s no replicas, and it’s all authentic.
She’s hopeful the items she plans to sell, as well as presenting her work in an Indigenous runway show while there, will help garner exposure beyond the North.
“I think just to be able to bring something different, something that’s unique to me and my nation and my upbringing and being able to bring it on to a different stage,” she said.
Making connections
John Sabourin, a Dene carver and sculptor based in Yellowknife, is already working on the handful of pieces he plans to bring to the market.
“I’m looking forward to meeting other artists from across North America, meeting new art galleries, and making connections with people for the possibility of other works,” he said.
Sabourin said there’s a lot of talented artists in the North, though the market is smaller than the south.
“There’s only so much art that you can sell in the North,” he said. “Ninety per cent of my carvings I ship out from Yellowknife.”
He said the market will provide a unique opportunity for northern artists to have their work noticed beyond the territories.
“I’m really excited to be part of this team,” he said. “It’s going to be it’s gonna be a lot of fun.”
In addition to the market, the cohort will also get the opportunity to meet with retail galleries as well as participate in fashion shows and an awards ceremony.
The market is set to take place Aug. 16 to 18.
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Native American artists edge ever closer to the million-dollar mark
At the major international Contemporary Art sales in New York last month, I thought I noticed a new trend. There were more Indigenous American artworks for sale than ever, and they were making record prices – a bright light in an otherwise fairly sombre marketplace.
Contemporary American Indigenous art used to be included in Native American sales along with the jewellery, blankets, totem poles and ethnographic tribal artefacts that remind us of bygone cultures. But with the call for change and diversity, the auction landscape shifted.
Perhaps the first visible turning point was in 2015, when Christie’s sold White Power, 2013, a boxer’s punch bag, decorated with coloured glass and plastic beads to counter aggression, by Jeffrey Gibson, a Choctaw/Cherokee Indian artist, for a quadruple estimate $233,000 (£183,000) in an international Contemporary Art sale. Gibson is now representing America at the Venice Biennale, the first Native American to be bestowed the honour.
It was also around 2015 that Ingmars Lindbergs of Bonhams noticed how contemporary works in his Native American sales were becoming more sought after. He singles out Fritz Scholder – a Pop Art-influenced artist of mixed European and Luiseño descent, who painted old-style American Indians with their headdresses, often on horseback. Superficially romantic, on closer inspection they referred to how the modern American Indian was plagued with problems – alcoholism, homelessness and displacement – in western society.
Scholder became a poster boy for the American Indian Movement in the 1970s, an adjunct to the civil rights movement, but his market did not take off until 2017, when Bonhams sold an example from his “Dartmouth Portrait” series (made with reference to the colonial era college that was founded to protect Indian rights) for a record $52,000.
Jeffrey Gibson’s The Enforcer
Lindbergs then decided to stage standalone sales for contemporary Native American art and within five years had sold another example from the “Dartmouth Portrait” series for $398,000. The market buzz for indigenous art has spread, says Lindbergs, after breaking 12 new indigenous artist’s records in Los Angeles in April.
Phillips doesn’t hold similar specialised auctions, but staged a selling exhibition, “New Terrains”, last September in which the work of more than 50 indigenous American artists were priced between $5,000 and almost $1 million. Among the top sellers was Canadian Cree artist Kent Monkman’s caustic reinterpretation of a classic 19th-century western painting, The Last of the Buffalo, by Albert Bierstadt. It was sold to the Art Bridges Foundation, which was created by Walmart heiress Alice Walton, a passionate collector of American art.
Fritz Scholder’s Dartmouth Portrait #8
Like Phillips, Sotheby’s and Christie’s don’t have specialised sales but are including examples by Native Americans in their international Contemporary Art sales alongside the Warhols, Basquiats and Hirsts. In November last year, a landmark price was achieved at Christie’s in this way for 84-year-old Native American Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
Smith’s career was being gently nurtured by New York dealer Garth Greenan when, in 2020, one of her paintings became the first by a Native American to enter the National Gallery of Art collection in Washington.
In the market, another work by Smith, estimated at $10,000, sold for $300,000 at Chicago auctioneers, Hindman’s, in 2022. So Christie’s pounced, obtaining Smith’s I See Red: Talking to the Ancestors, 1994, for sale. The painting is from a series that takes issue with the term “Red Indian” and all that came with it. It was the artist’s first painting with a leading auctioneer and sold for a phenomenal $642,600 against an $80,000 estimate. Smith’s more recent work is currently attracting attention in the Venice Biennale’s “Foreigners Everywhere” exhibition.
I See Red: Talking to the Ancestors (1994), by Native American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, which Christie’s sold for $642,600 late in 2022
The most remarkable results for a Native American last month were for 67-year-old Navajo Indian painter Emmi Whitehorse, another star of the “Foreigners Everywhere” exhibition, by whom one painting was offered by Sotheby’s with a $15,000 estimate and sold for a record $127,000. That record was then overhauled at Phillips the next day when her atmospheric, Turner-esque desert landscape, Canyon Lake 1, estimated at $12,000, sold for $177,800. Phillips also obtained a record $381,000 for The Storm, a painting by Kent Monkman that critiques the role of the Mounties in subjugating indigenous peoples.
Next week, the art world flocks to Basel in Switzerland for the largest, most prestigious modern and contemporary art fair of all: Art Basel. Greenan will be there displaying choice works by Whitehorse, for which he has a waiting list and examples by Scholder and Smith, two of the indigenous artists who are beginning to approach the million-dollar mark. One senses that benchmark moment may not be too far off.
A fair wind blows through Chelsea
Sometimes it is better for rival events to take place in close proximity so that each may benefit from the other’s audience. This may have been the thinking behind the distinctive “Eye of the Collector” fair with its uncluttered boothless layout which has moved from Temple Place on Victoria Embankment to the Garrison Chapel in Chelsea Barracks and opens on June 26. The fair’s new home is a stone’s throw from “The Treasure House Fair” (opening June 27) in the grounds of the Royal Hospital Chelsea. This emerged last year out of the ruins of the prestigious Masterpiece fair which closed under the weight of Brexit red tape and a lack of overseas exhibitors. While both fairs are promoting contemporary art from Asia and the Middle East, “Eye of the Collector” is more focused on modern and contemporary art and design, while “Treasure House” flaunts attractions such as a 180-million-year-old fossil of a pregnant dinosaur, a 50,000-year-old woolly rhinoceros skull and a fleet of classic cars.
Your chance to own some big-name art
Preparatory sketch: a Degas pastel on sale at Stern Pissarro Gallery
The Stern Pissarro Gallery in St James’s has just opened an exhibition marking 150 years since the birth of Impressionism with some impressive works by Monet, Pissarro, Renoir, Sisley, Degas and Cézanne, plus some Post-Impressionists – all for sale with prices from £10,000 to £10 million. The Degas pastel illustrated here is of a seamstress embroidering a hat in a milliner’s shop c.1885 – and is a study for a painting, Chez la modiste, at the Art Institute of Chicago. Degas liked to experience the bustle of Paris boulevards and often frequented milliner’s shops with his friend the painter Mary Cassatt. The Impressionist market has been quiet of late, but high prices at the Microsoft co-founder Paul G Allen’s sale in 2022 and healthy results in the New York sales this May show that while the number of high-octane sales may have decreased, values in this perennially popular market are holding steady.
Aboriginal artist’s 3D digital artwork lights up Bourke Street billboard
All-Indigenous Artists Collective Creative Nations Launches First Storyteller’s Festival To Develop Works For The Stage By Native Artists Sept 30-Oct 6th, 2024
Editor’s Note: Press releases are provided to Yellow Scene Magazine. In an effort to keep our community informed, we publish some press releases in whole.
(Boulder, CO – May 8, 2024) – Creative Nations, an all-Indigenous-led artists collective founded at The Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, is thrilled to announce the inaugural First Storyteller’s Festival (FSF). This groundbreaking event is dedicated to nurturing works for the stage by Native artists and storytellers. FSF 2024 will take place from Sept. 30th through Oct. 6th at multiple locations across Boulder County.
The festival will feature a dynamic lineup of events designed to support and showcase the diverse talents of Native playwrights, musicians, poets, dancers, and other storytellers. Attendees can look forward to a diverse range of events including staged readings, panel discussions, workshop productions, and educational workshops aimed at training both current and future generations of Native theater artists.
Marty Strenczewilk, festival founder, Ojibwe playwright and Creative Nations Managing Director, expressed his excitement, saying, “As a playwright, I’ve always dreamed of being part of a festival built by Native artists that focused on developing work by Native artists. Being able to bring FSF to life has been something I’ve been working on for quite a long time and the outpouring of community support has been incredible. I believe FSF will serve as a vital platform for amplifying Native voices and stories.”
Melissa Fathman, Executive Director of The Dairy Arts Center, emphasized the center’s commitment to supporting Native artists and continuing to serve as a hub for engaging arts experiences. She stated, “We are honored to continue to support Creative Nations and thrilled to be part of its First Storyteller’s Festival. This festival aligns perfectly with our mission to promote diversity, inclusion, and artistic excellence. We look forward to providing a welcoming space for Native artists to share their talents and stories with the Boulder community.”
In addition to The Dairy Arts Center, FSF is proud to announce new partnerships with three major cultural institutions of the region: Colorado Chautauqua, the Longmont Museum, and CU Boulder’s Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies and its Department of Theater and Dance. These partnerships will further enhance the festival’s capacity to develop works and reach new audiences.
Tickets for FSF 2024 will be available at a later date. In the meantime, mark your calendars and join us in Boulder for an exciting week celebrating the rich tapestry of Native storytelling and creativity. Visit https://www.firststorytellersfestival.org/ for festival updates, including ticket sales.
About Creative Nations
Creative Nations’ Sacred Space is a permanent onsite establishment for Indigenous Artists at the Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, Colorado. The goals at Creative Nations are to create a space for creation and collaboration, as well as foster opportunities for all Indigenous artists to thrive. All donations given to Creative Nations will be put towards causes, projects, and programming that benefit Native arts.
For more information, visit: https://thedairy.org/creative-nations-art/
About the Dairy Arts Center
The Dairy Arts Center is Boulder’s largest multi-disciplinary arts venue, hosting an array of theatrical performances, concerts, visual art galleries, films, comedy, dance productions, and more within 42,000 square feet of newly-renovated facilities. The building’s transformation from a milk processing facility to an arts hub in 1992 is a nationally recognized example of constructive urban development and renewal. The Dairy houses three ultramodern live performance theaters, several studio art galleries, and an 80-seat art-house cinema. From weekly events like Friday Night Weird to community gatherings, creativity is always being celebrated at the Dairy.
For more information, visit: https://thedairy.org
About Colorado Chautauqua
The Colorado Chautauqua preserves, perpetuates and improves the historic site and spirit of Chautauqua by enhancing its community and values through cultural, educational, social and recreational experiences. https://www.chautauqua.com/
About Longmont Museum
The Longmont Museum is a center for culture in Northern Colorado where people of all ages explore history, experience art, and discover new ideas through dynamic programs, exhibitions, and events. https://www.longmontcolorado.gov/departments/departments-e-m/museum/about-the-museum
About the CU BoulderCenter for Native American and Indigenous Studies:
CNAIS promotes collaborative research, teaching and creative work focusing on both local and global Indigenous knowledge and values, and fosters wide ranging Native and Indigenous Studies projects that aim to open conversations both in Colorado and the world. https://www.colorado.edu/cnais/
About the CU Boulder Department of Theater and Dance
The Department of Theatre & Dance at CU Boulder provides students with the tools and space to become the next generation of citizens, professionals, and leaders in and through theatre, dance, and performance studies. https://www.colorado.edu/theatredance
8 Indigenous musicians to know in 2024
CBC Music is celebrating National Indigenous History Month with eight artists you need to know in 2024. Whether you’re a fan of breezy folk music, cathartic pop, electrifying hip-hop or soulful R&B, these emerging musicians should be on your radar.
Mattmac
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Mattmac is an Oji-Cree music producer and rapper from Garden Hill First Nation who has been on the rise for the past few years, and recently had a breakthrough when he was crowned the winner of CBC Music’s 2023 Searchlight competition. His tracks are a tight mix of crisp trap beats and catchy pop hooks, and often feature collaborations with fellow Indigenous artists such as Mariame and Rex Smallboy. Whether rapping about anxiety or singing about heartbreak, Mattmac’s unapologetic authenticity shines through in every song.
His latest release, “Imposters,” is an upbeat track that acknowledges the pressures of fame while also celebrating his community: “I wanna see my people at the top,” he sings. “We’re out here breaking barriers and countering stereotypes, and just doing our own thing,” he said in a press release, summing up not only the song’s empowering theme, but also his approach to making music. — Natalie Harmsen
Anachnid
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It’s been just over four years since Kiki Harper, a.k.a. Anachnid, shared Dreamweaver, her debut album full of electro-pop synthscapes that transport you to a different world. The Oji-Cree musician has released a few tracks since her 2020 record was longlisted for the Polaris Prize — her most recent being a three-song EP, 2023’s Freak of Nature, in collaboration with Popop Records and Musique Nomade.
On Freak of Nature, Anachnid’s vocals are sparse, haunting and ethereal, which is a bit of a departure from her past work. There are no lyrics, and the sounds coming from Harper are natural, human sounds she hopes listeners can connect with on a visceral level, “to show, really, what the Indigenous universe is like,” Harper told Popop in French.
Freak of Nature is an extension of her lived experience as an Indigenous woman in downtown Montreal — tuned up with synths, drums and vocal effects. Harper’s vocals are non-intrusive, inviting the listener in close. In a time where it feels like we’re constantly surrounded by noise, Anachnid tells us to stop, listen and just be. — Kyle Muzyka
Wyatt C. Louis
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Folk artist Wyatt C. Louis is a nêhiyaw singer-songwriter based in Moh’kinstsís, Treaty 7 Territory. Their voice echoes with warmth and soul on their debut album, Chandler (their middle name), which was released in May. The album is filled with gentle guitar strumming and honeyed melodies that capture the haze of summer. Bursts of pedal steel on songs such as “Bobtail Road” add a country feel to Louis’s sound, but don’t let the lush instrumentals distract you from their songwriting skills: CBC Music producer Robert Rowat described Louis as “a lyricist who imbues simple, direct language with poignant layers of meaning.”
Chandler may be a new release, but Louis is already looking ahead to their next project, which could potentially include linguistic nods to their heritage: “I’m working one tune where I’m trying to incorporate Cree words that I’ve learned that also mean a lot to me,” they told the Calgary Herald. “I’m trying to mix the two and make them co-exist.” — NH
Semiah
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The first line in Semiah’s electro-pop banger “Celestial Bodies” hits in a way that’s hard to describe: “I don’t give a flying f–k about you,” the Mohawk, Turtle Clan artist sings, in a melodic raising of her voice that makes it feel pointed at you, the listener. But don’t worry — it’s not. “I really say that with my chest,” Semiah told CBC Hamilton in 2022. “I don’t give a f–k about any of these politicians that told us we can’t be who we are.”
The song is also a nod to who she is and who surrounds her: generations of grandparents, aunties and uncles who are with her always. Semiah calls herself the Baby Aunty, and she’s certainly channeling her auntie energy in parts of her 2023 EP, After the Night Ends.
She was reluctant at first, but as Semiah lets the audience in on the teachings and culture that guide her — like on “Celestial Bodies” — her authenticity shines through. “The overall song is celebrating that we’re still here … and it’s really just such a miracle that we still have what we have today.” — KM
Rebecca Strong
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Rebecca Strong, a Denesuliné singer from Prince Albert, Sask., was most recently crowned the winner of Canada’s Got Talent. She’s covered a number of popular artists including Billie Eilish and Adele — she sang a passionate rendition of Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” before winning the competition. But the powerful young vocalist has been singing for much longer than her run on national TV: growing up, she performed in the bands the Strong Sisters and in Thunder and the Skydancers with her family.
“I like to write about things that people can relate to,” she told CBC News of her forthcoming album. Following her win, she plans to hit the road for a tour. “I want to share my music with as many people as I can.” — NH
Sekawnee
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The West Coast is teeming with Indigenous hip-hop talent, but no one is quite doing it like Sekawnee. The Afro-Indigenous musician raps over G-funk and trap-inspired beats so cold you might expect a “Mustard on the beat” tag — except these tracks have sampled and reverbed powwow vocals. This kind of First Nations flavour isn’t exactly new, but Sekawnee and his frequent collaborators, Chasé Scanz and EfrainYB, move through the song “Nations” effortlessly: they are constantly reminding us where they’re from, but in a style that feels both fresh and unforced.
And it’s not just their lyrics. In the music video for “Nations” — which has been a big hit on Native TikTok and has almost 100,000 streams on Spotify — the three rappers are situated in community: donning lacrosse sticks, driving ATVs around, and hanging out with the kids from the rez.
Sekawnee is for the children and for his culture — two things he carries with him as he continues to build momentum, releasing his latest, “Hereditary Sound,” on May 31. — KM
Jessa Sky
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Métis Cree pop singer Jessa Sky’s vulnerability is her artistic strength. Whether she’s laying bare the challenges of sobriety, or lamenting lost love in her songs, Sky’s willingness to reveal her dark sides invites listeners to connect with her music. Her debut album, Sky’s the Limit, is an exercise in diaristic transparency: “I choose to share my darkest moments with such a large audience, because I can almost guarantee someone is or has experienced what I have,” she told Canvas Rebel in 2023.
The record serves as a soundtrack for healing, and its songs are poignant anthems of resilience. “We were given strength from the creator, to overcome and be somebody greater,” she sings on “We’re Not Lost,” one of the standouts of the project. Sky’s the Limit is pop with purpose: Sky presents her ups and downs with care, but uses bright melodies to unite all her thoughts and feelings. It may only be her first album, but it’s indicative of her commitment to heartfelt, lyrical storytelling. — NH
Sister Ray
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It was the “storytelling rooted in collective value, resilience, and safety” in traditional Métis music that helped Ella Coyes, a.k.a. Sister Ray, understand their place on this land. Coyes is more than a singer-songwriter; they are a storyteller whose specific and personal lyrics carry their story in ways that are impossible to do without song.
“Sharing it through the music, there is this sense of feeling almost kind of infinitely understood,” they told CBC Arts last year. “Music feels like the most true format for me to make sense of things that maybe should be secrets, but they escape the realm of secret for me and live in songs.”
Those secrets manifest in astounding honesty; they are experiences so specific and yet somehow allegorical, as if your tarot cards are being read in folk-song form.
Coyes is wrapping up their second album, building off their 2023 EP, Teeth. They (and we) would like you to know that they are making this new record in socks and sandals. — KM
Indigenous artists and the art market
From the June 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
Does the Venice Biennale affect the art market? The consensus on this non-commercial festival, which opened last month, is usually yes. In the va-va-voom 2000s it was common to see collectors snapping up works by Venice stars as soon as they could at Art Basel (for years the Venice preview ended two days before the opening of the fair). ‘See in Venice, buy in Basel’ became an often-repeated phrase.
If the conventional wisdom holds true, this year should be a good one for Indigenous artists – those who trace their ancestries to the first inhabitants of countries such as Canada, Australia, Brazil and Norway. The winner of the Golden Lion for the best national pavilion, Archie Moore, is of Kamilaroi/Bigambul heritage. His stark, black and white installation in the Australian pavilion is a memorial to the 60,000-year history of his Aboriginal ancestors. Indigenous artists Jeffrey Gibson, Inuuteq Storch and Glicéria Tupinambá also represented the United States, Denmark and Brazil respectively.
The main International Art Exhibition, curated by Adriano Pedrosa, was similarly filled with work by Indigenous artists, including father and son Colombian/Nonuya painters Abel Rodríguez and Aycoobo, and the Native American artists Kay WalkingStick and Emmi Whitehorse. The Golden Lion for best work went to four Maori women artists, the Mataaho Collective, for a minimalist installation made from polyester hi-vis cargo straps.
This is not a new phenomenon. Some Indigenous artists achieved worldwide fame decades ago, particularly Australians such as Clifford Possum Tjapaltjarri and Emily Kame Kngwarreye, who will have a retrospective at Tate Modern next year. Tjapaltjarri holds the auction record for a work by an Australian Aboriginal artist for Warlugulong (1977), which sold in 2007 at Sotheby’s to the National Gallery of Australia for A$2.4m. The record for a female Australian artist was achieved by Kngwarreye’s work Earth’s Creation (1994), which sold in 2017 for A$2.1m at Sydney auction house Cooee Art Leven. Her work was also included in Gagosian’s ‘Desert Painters of Australia’ exhibitions in New York and Los Angeles in 2019.
Installation view of ‘kith and kin’ (2024) by Archie Moore in Australia’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale, 2024. Photo: Andrea Rossetti; courtesy the artist/The Commercial; © the artist
Most Indigenous artists are much less well known. But they were a focus of curator Adam Szymczyk’s edition of Documenta 14 in 2017, which included work by Canadian/Kwakwaka’wakw artist Beau Dick and the Sami Artist Group. More recently, the huge international survey ‘Indigenous Histories’ opened last year at the Museum of Art of São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand (MASP), of which Pedrosa is artistic director. It is now at KODE in Bergen (until 25 August).
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes based in Montana, had the first solo retrospective of a Native American artist in the 93-year history of the Whitney Museum in New York last year (see May 2023 issue of Apollo). She mounted her own exhibition of contemporary Native American artists at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., ‘The Land Carries our Ancestors’, the first at the museum in 70 years. It is now at the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut (until 15 September).
‘There’s definitely momentum at the moment,’ says Candice Hopkins, a Canadian-born curator and citizen of the Carcross/Tagish First Nation. She directs the Forge Project in upstate New York, which supports Native American arts and artists by buying work and lending them out. Hopkins credits exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale and Documenta 14 for driving change. ‘Documenta was the biggest, most sustained platform that a lot of Indigenous artists had ever had,’ she says. ‘Venice is also introducing a lot of artists and voices that aren’t broadly known.’
The Tate began collecting the work of Indigenous artists around a decade ago, but Hopkins says that New York has only begun to catch up in the past five years. ‘We usually understand the art world as an ecosystem of curators, critics, art historians, collectors and galleries,’ she says. ‘But most Native artists I have worked with have had marginal [commercial] representation or none at all.’
Even artists who have found success in the biggest and most competitive art market – the United States – say they have faced tough times. Jeffrey Gibson, a Mississippi Choctaw-Cherokee painter, sculptor and film-maker, is the first Native American to represent his country in Venice. He studied at two of the world’s best art schools, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Royal College of Art in London, but by 2011 was considering quitting. ‘It all had to do with homophobia, racism and classism, specifically in the art world, and how challenging it was for me to engage in it,’ he says. At the same time, he was meeting traditional makers in states such as Oklahoma, Oregon and South Dakota. This led to a breakthrough phase of work, including a series of patterned, beaded boxing punchbags. ‘I realised all these people making their own clothes, music and quilts was a way of removing themselves from the mass culture,’ he says.
Gibson is now represented by three commercial galleries, including Stephen Friedman. The gallery declined to comment, but there is little doubt that Gibson’s market has grown since the dark days of 2011. At Frieze London in 2022 the gallery reportedly sold his works for between $135,000 and $300,000.
My Heart Belongs to Daddy (1998), Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Courtesy Phillips; © the artist
‘The sky’s the limit for Gibson,’ says Los Angeles-based Native American art expert James Trotta-Bono. Earlier this year, Trotta-Bono was one of the advisors for ‘New Terrains’, a selling exhibition by auction house Phillips in New York. It included work by almost 70 artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, with prices ranging from $5,000 to close to $1m.
Trotta-Bono says the market for modern and contemporary work revolves around overlapping groups of artists. The earliest are those associated with the ‘studio school’ style of painting, founded in 1932 at the Sante Fe Indian School and with Bacone College in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Artists from this period painted in a flat, colourful style, drawing from Indigenous traditions and include Awa Tsireh and Narciso Abeyta (or Ha So De) from the south-west and Woody Crumbo and Solomon McCombs from Oklahoma.
Transitional post-war artists such as Oscar Howe and George Morrison fused their Native heritage with modernism, and paved the way for the founding of the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe. It fostered a new generation of contemporary Native artists such as Fritz Scholder and T.C. Cannon. Then there are more recent artists, such as Quick-to-See Smith, WalkingStick and Whitehorse, and younger artists such as Nicholas Galanin, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Melissa Cody and Rose B. Simpson.
Trotta-Bono says the markets for all three groups are rising, driven in part by large US institutions. ‘There is a rethinking of the American art story through a more inclusive lens, and many institutions are either doing their part or starting to catch up,’ he says.
Garth Greenan founded his New York contemporary art gallery in New York just over a decade ago, and has developed a reputation for championing under-recognised artists, including Native Americans. ‘It was only a matter of time – you can’t expand the canon of American art history without including all Americans,’ he says.
African American artists have seen a huge surge in curatorial interest in the past decade, but it is only recently that similar attention is being paid to Native artists. Why this should be the case is unclear. It may reflect the relative size of the populations: according to the US Census Bureau, around seven million people identify as having Native American heritage, one-sixth the size of the Black population.
Historically, many were forcibly relocated from eastern states: half the population lives in Oklahoma, Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas. ‘There’s certainly been a degree of invisibility on the East Coast,’ Greenan says. ‘It was shocking how difficult it was to get people to pay attention when I started. But fortunately I had a core group of regular clients who believed in what I was doing.’
Quick-to-See-Smith, who Greenan represents, has seen her prices rise steadily, he says. A decade ago, large paintings were priced between $80,000 and $200,000. Now they range from $350,000 to more than $1m. The best works by Scholder and Morrison are also believed to sell privately for close to $1m and over $2m respectively, according to other experts. ‘Ironically, now I have people asking me if this is a bubble,’ Greenan says. ‘Well, you can have bubbles around anything, but the artists that are important will stay.’
Irene Snarby is an external curator on ‘Indigenous Histories’, specialising in the art of the Sami people. She says that their work was often dismissed as craft and while that has changed, artists still face many challenges. ‘In Norway, those that speak Norwegian can go to Oslo – but many don’t want to: they are deeply connected to their communities.’ Even fewer speak English, so reaching international curators is difficult. She adds: ‘Most live in remote areas and it is very expensive to send work unless it is film or photography.’
Horse and Rider (1977), Fritz Scholder. Courtesy Phillips
Some critics are tiring of the curatorial focus on identity politics. The Economist’s culture editor wrote of Venice that ‘you get the sense that the reason certain paintings are grouped together seems to be that the artists identify as indigenous or queer, rather than the work sharing any visual characteristics’. Having spoken to art advisers and a museum director, she added ‘the secret of this Biennale is that a lot of people found it unsatisfying’.
Others doubt the power of biennials to affect the broader market. As long ago as 2017, one of New York’s leading art advisers, Allan Schwartzman, wrote that ‘over time, with a few notable exceptions these sweeping Herculean shows have started to lose their prescience, their clarity and deep insight’.
Yet this Venice Biennale is filled with a rarely seen quantity of exciting and unfamiliar work, from the textiles of Argentinian/Wichi artist Claudia Alarcón to the jungle paintings of Peruvian/Aimeni artist Santiago Yahuarcani. It is a worthy successor to Cecilia Alemani’s 2022 edition, which foregrounded the work of women. That exhibition had an almost immediate effect on the market for female Surrealists, especially the work of the lesser known.
Of course, what is perhaps most appealing about Indigenous artists is the fact that the themes many embrace – the need to protect the environment, the sacred nature of land and animals, the importance of history, tradition and community – is antithetical to Western individualistic, industrial, consumer culture. A reckoning is sweeping parts of the art world. But it may not be a message that all of it wants to hear.
From the June 2024 issue of Apollo. Preview and subscribe here.
Native American Art Showcased At Tulsa Indian Club’s Mother’s Day Market
Tulsa Indian Club showcased Native American art, clothing and music at its Mother’s Day Art Market on Sunday.
Sunday, May 5th 2024, 10:10 pm
By:
News On 6
TULSA, Okla. –
Tulsa Indian Club showcased Native American art, clothing and music at its Mother’s Day Art Market on Sunday.
The event featured some local native vendors, a fashion show and live music from native drummers and singers.
It also showcased traditional songs and different styles of powwow dancing.
For a list of all the artists and businesses at the event, go to Tulsa Indian Club on Facebook.
