Body artists often make works about the relationship between the body and the mind. Through their body, they explore themes like suffering, pain, nudity, or shame. Body art also deals with gender, power, and identity. Body artists have often blurred the existing lines in the relationship between the artist and the audience. In recent years, many body artists have been experimenting with body implants and virtual bodies. Here are 9 body artists that you should know.

The breadth of body art is wide: Body and face modifications have been around for a long time dating back to prehistoric times. Tattooing and face painting are old practices originating in the native cultures of New Zealand and North America. Mimes can also be considered a type of body art that originated in Ancient Greece. Performance art, also known as Body art, first appeared as a medium of its own in the middle of the 1960s, and then had a revival in the 1990s.

During the 1960s and 1970s, the Western world saw several social revolutions like the struggle for women’s equality. The perpetuation of idealizations of women’s bodies in Western art and the media, which men overwhelmingly generated, started being studied by artists and art historians. Feminist artists reclaimed their bodies and used new ways to represent them. Using their bodies in performance became a way for many artists to assert control.

By using their bodies artists connected their individual experiences with the shared human experience. A body artist’s performance, thus, functioned as a synecdoche to humanity and the challenges we face in finding common ground for our experiences. The body became a perfect tool to show that something personal was indeed political.

1. Chris Burden

​​Chris Burden cemented his place in art history with the work called Shoot. In a public exhibition in 1971, the controversial artist invited a friend to fire at him with a .22 rifle from a distance of 15 feet. The gunman was slightly off target, and the bullet entered Burden’s arm. This performance allowed the audience to witness a real example of what happens when someone gets shot. The desensitization of society to violence and the difference between seeing a terrible event live and on television were the main themes in this work.

In response to countless murders in the former Yugoslavia, Abramović composed Balkan Baroque. She spent four days washing each of these gory bones while sitting on top of 1,500 cow bones, wearing a white dress, surrounded by projected photographs of her and her parents. She sang some of her country’s folk songs and recorded an explanation of how to eliminate rats in the Balkans. Due to the scorching heat and foul stench in the basement chamber, the performance progression became visceral. She believed that the analogy between being unable to wash away all the blood and not being able to remove the disgrace of war had a universal application.

3. Yoko Ono

Yoko Ono was one of the pioneers of participatory art. Ono first performed her Cut Piece in Kyoto in 1964. Since then, she has performed it in Tokyo, New York, London, and, most recently, Paris in 2003. The involvement of others is fundamental to her work. Cut Piece depends on the audience’s willingness to understand and comply with the artist’s directions, or the rules she called the score. These rules defined the roles of participants.

Cut Piece had the artist sitting on a stage in her finest suit, holding a pair of scissors in front of her. The audience was directed to approach her one at a time, using the scissors to snip off a small piece of her garment which they were to keep. Some people cautiously approached her, snipping a tiny square of fabric from her skirt or sleeve. Others came boldly, slicing off the bra straps or the front of her clothing. In an interview with MoMA, Ono stated: When I do the Cut Piece, I get into a trance, and so I don’t feel too frightened.…We usually give something with a purpose…but I wanted to see what they would take….There was a long silence between one person coming up and the next person coming up. And I said it’s fantastic, beautiful music, you know? Ba-ba-ba-ba, cut! Ba-ba-ba-ba, cut! Beautiful poetry, actually.

This photograph shows a woman tracing the cityscape of Vienna with her body by bending her back to mimic the curb’s curve. The image overlaps with a thick red line that follows the shape emphasized by the position, making the relationship between the city and the body prominent. It is a part of the Körperkonfigurationen (Body Configurations) series, which Valie EXPORT began working on in the middle of the 1970s. The figures in the series accentuate the geometry of the city. The prints are highlighted by additions like the red line seen in the work above or black ink painted over silver gelatin prints. The artist’s body is depicted as something that contrasts the cityscape.

5. Gina Pane

Gina Pane is best known for her Azione pieces, in which she would execute a series of actions using her own body. These actions frequently demanded extreme physical endurance and pain tolerance. She encouraged the audience to empathize emotionally with what she was experiencing. She performed her actions privately, but they were precisely set and shot so that the viewer might sense the emotional depth of the piece even if they had not observed its making.

Azione Sentimentale is a complex, multilayered work that uses the visual language of ritual and religion to comment on pleasure, grief, and love between women. Pane performed this act in front of an all-women audience at Milan’s Galleria Diagramma. She entered the gallery wearing all white while holding red roses. She offered the roses to the audience and then took them back. She removed the thorns and stabbed her arm with them by neatly arranging them in a row. She then cut the palm of her hand with a razor blade. After which, she started giving the audience white roses stained by her bloodied palm. The juxtaposition of white and red, the blood, and the stigmata all mark sacrifice and allude to Christian theology.

ORLAN is a pioneer of what she considers Carnal Art. She poses intriguing concerns about consent, self-image, and beauty that foreshadow and inspire many current debates on transhumanism, utopian technology, and body modification. The methods ORLAN uses to draw the audience’s attention to her body, such as cameras, microscopes, and live feeds, are critical for the meaning of her works. ORLAN’s body is the main subject of her works. Her work explores the process of surgery rather than the end product of plastic surgery, making the altered body a place of public debate instead of a spectacle.

7. Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle

Annie Sprinkle has dealt with sex and love in various contexts, from the point of view of a sex worker and a porn actress to that of a performance artist. She and her partner Beth Stephens are pioneers of ecosexuality, a form of earth-loving sexual identity that declares that the Earth is our lover. Seeing nature as a lover suggests that a connection with the Earth is reciprocal, and as a result, ecosexuality holds people responsible for protecting the environment. This questions heteronormative notions and redefines concepts of gender, love, and sexuality.

Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle married Earth in 2008. The first marriage was followed by many more, including a white wedding to the snow, a purple wedding to the moon, and many more. The wedding guests joined Stephens and Sprinkle as they vowed to love, honor, and cherish many facets of the cosmos. Sprinkle and Stephens have authored vows for marrying the Earth, ecosexual manifestos, and directions for making love to the Earth called 25 Ways to Make Love to the Earth.

Herman Nitsch was a contemporary artist from Austria. His performances are theatrical and they incorporate different media. He focused on involving bodies in rituals and violence in order to explore life more holistically.

The Orgies Mysteries Theater was a 6-day performance held at a folk festival meant to celebrate humans. The work consisted of different artistic mediums and it was first performed in the 1950s.

9. Yayoi Kusama: Body Art Without the Artist’s Body

Infinity Mirror Rooms is a series that Kusama started making in the 1960s. The artist has now produced over twenty of these rooms. Each Infinity Mirror Room is a pitch-black room entirely covered in mirrors. Kusama had previously decorated these rooms with lanterns, phalluses, and pumpkins. Today, little LED lights suspended from the ceiling flash repetitively to create pulsing electronic polka dots. The mirrors provide the impression of limitless space. The person experiencing the room becomes essential to the piece itself.

The artist’s body is not present, nevertheless, the work depends on the viewer’s body and physical presence to create meaning. The participant’s body doubles, triples, and quadruples in infinity. Thus, this work plays with the perception of the body and identity.

Six city trams have been transformed into a moving gallery of Indigenous art.

The Melbourne trams hit the tracks on Tuesday to bring the work of First Nations artists to the streets.

The designs are centred on the theme of Blak Futurism – a call to envision a better future for Australia’s first peoples.

Among the six artists from Victoria is Boonwurrung/Erub woman Amina Briggs, whose purple, pink and blue design incorporates native birds and a national map with the word reclaim above it.

The artworks will remain on the trams for 12 months.

Each tram features a QR code to allow passengers to learn about the artists and their designs.

The third annual project is part of the RISING festival and brings together Yarra Trams, Creative Victoria and the Department of Transport.

Sarah Dees pulls several yellow-tinged booklets out of plastic bags. Flipping through one titled “Life Among the Indians,” she points out sections on ceremonies and customs. Toward the back are ads for so-called “Indian remedies,” products like “Kickapoo Indian Sagwa” and “Kickapoo Indian Worm Killer.”

Dees, an assistant professor of American religions at Iowa State University, explains the booklets were part of a larger marketing campaign by the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company. It was founded in 1881 by two Euro-American men, one of whom claimed a Kickapoo healer had saved his life with “Sagwa” and divulged its secret ingredients.

“While the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company no longer exists, there are many examples today of companies that appropriate Indigenous cultures to turn a profit,” says Dees. “By examining these historical instances of cultural appropriation, we can better understand more recent forms that have spread over the course of the 19th and 21st centuries and grapple with tough questions about appropriation vs. appreciation.”

In a new peer-reviewed paper, Dees emphasizes it’s common for people to draw from other cultures. But misrepresenting cultures or “hijacking narratives” for economic gain can cause harm, especially when unequal power dynamics are at play. Dees shows how the Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company pushed stereotypes and claimed authority on Indigenous cultures to sell products to non-Native consumers.

She also highlights several ironies. As “Indian remedies” became mainstream, the U.S. government rolled out policies to restrict Indigenous healing and spiritual practices, which Dees explains are often intertwined.

Kickapoo Indian Company

In the late 1800s, Dees says there was growing interest in “medicines purported to draw on Native American medicinal knowledge.” Part of this was a backlash to the Industrial Revolution and Western medicine’s harsh, sometimes deadly treatments, like bloodletting and mercury compounds.

The Kickapoo Indian Medicine Company advertised its remedies as harmless (because they were all natural) but also powerful in their ability to help people “achieve total well-being.” The company frequently did this by exploiting the image of the “noble savage,” a trope of an Indigenous person uncorrupted by civilization, morally pure and living in harmony with nature.

Dees says one of the reasons this stereotype is problematic is because it suggests Indigenous people must stay in the past to be authentic.

The Age of Aquarius

The number of Indian medicine companies declined with the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. But interest in Native American healing practices by non-Native people resurfaced again during the latter half of the 20th century. Dees explains an eclectic set of practices emerged with the New Age movement, which drew from earlier spiritualist ideas (e.g., seances, hypnotism,) eastern religions, old European pagan traditions and Indigenous ceremonies.

“One of the big critiques of New Age practices is that they’re very individualistic. It’s this idea that you can buy a blessing or pay $1,000 for a sweat lodge for your own personal betterment when Indigenous religious practices are communal and specific to a nation or a subgroup within that nation,” says Dees.

This extraction of spiritual practices makes it harder for Indigenous communities to control narratives about the history and purpose of their traditions. Some also worry that sharing certain ceremonies and sacred sites with outsiders reduces their potency.

In her paper, Dees points to the 1993 Lakota Summit in which 500 members passed the “Declaration of War against Exploiters of Lakota Spirituality.” It denounced the long process of “having [their] most precious Lakota ceremonies and spiritual practices desecrated, mocked and abused by non-Indian ‘wannabes,’ hucksters, cultists, commercial profiteers and self-styled ‘New Age shamans’ and their followers.”

Cultural appreciation vs. appropriation

Whether it’s Victoria’s Secret models wearing headdresses or sage smudge sticks sold on Amazon, companies continue to profit from Indigenous cultures and healing practices. But Dees says there’s also been more interest in finding the line between cultural appreciation and cultural appropriation.

“If someone’s curious or unsure, I really encourage going to the source and finding multiple perspectives. You can learn a lot from Indigenous artists, writers and musicians because they’re going to share stories from their lives and communities that they feel comfortable sharing,” says Dees. “But also, I think it’s good to remember that sometimes there are multiple perspectives. People’s outlooks within one nation may differ greatly.”

She also recommends that people who are interested in Native designs support Indigenous artists rather than buy ‘Native-inspired’ knockoffs.

Five artists, representing that number of regions of Canada, are now in contention for one of the most prestigious art prizes in the country.

The Nova Scotia-based Sobey Art Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada announced the five nominees for the 2023 Sobey Art Award on Wednesday. The shortlisted artists will vie for a first prize of $100,000, to be awarded in November at the NGC in Ottawa.

“The breadth of practices this year represents the multi-faceted texture and strength of contemporary artistic talent in this country,” said Jonathan Shaughnessy, NGC’s director of curatorial initiatives and chair of the Sobey Award jury. “The work of the five finalists present views on many urgent matters of our time, including 2SLGBTQ+ solidarities and representation, as well as critical questions regarding diasporic experience and Canadian identity.”

From east to west, the nominees are as follows:

From Moncton and currently living in Halifax, Seamus Gallagher is a lens-based artist who infuses queer aesthetics with self-portraiture. Outside of photography and video, the graduate of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design and recipient of the 2022 Scotiabank New Generation Photography Award generally works with a video-game engine to create virtual reality art projects.

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Montreal-based Anahita Norouzi is a research-driven multidisciplinary artist whose practice is inspired by marginalized histories, botanical explorations and archeological excavations. The Tehran native and Concordia University graduate regularly travels between Iran and Canada to conduct her research.

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Michèle Pearson Clarke is a former photo laureate of Toronto whose work often focuses on Black and queer experiences of longing and loss. Born in Trinidad, she holds a master of social work from the University of Toronto and is assistant professor of photography at Toronto Metropolitan University.

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Representing the Prairies and the North, Inuvialuk artist and curator Kablusiak creates work in a variety of mediums, including, but not limited to, lingerie, flour, soapstone, bed sheets and acrylic paint. The work from the Yellowknife-born, Calgary-based artist explores the Inuit diaspora and the effects of colonization on Inuit gender and sexuality expressions.

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Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill is a Métis artist and writer whose sculptural practice explores the history of found materials and challenges the notion of the city as a settled place. Exploring the concepts of land, property and economy, she incorporates such detritus as beer-can tabs, dollar-store lockets and dandelions into sculptures and works on paper she calls “spells.” The artist was born in Comox, B.C., and lives in Vancouver.

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Created in 2002 by the Sobey Art Foundation, the juried prize is awarded annually to an artist who has exhibited in a public or commercial art gallery within 18 months of being nominated, and who first landed on a long list of 25 nominees announced in April.

While the winner takes home $100,000, each runner-up will receive $25,000; each of the other 20 longlisted artists will be awarded $10,000. The NGC’s exhibition of works by the five finalists opens Oct. 13 and runs through March 3, 2024.

Winnipeg’s Divya Mehra won the Sobey in 2022. Her work, which often uses whimsy to comment on colonial cultural relationships, includes the Taj Mahal imagined as a bouncy castle.

In the summer, cruise passengers flood downtown Seattle and Pike Place Market as they look for the perfect memento before starting or ending their journey to Alaska.

One place on many tourists’ minds is Eighth Generation, a Native-owned lifestyle brand, which specializes in wool blankets designed by Native American artists and is one of the fastest growing Native-owned business in the country. At the end of May, Eighth Generation moved from its location in Pike Place Market just above the Gum Wall to a street-level space with more visibility at 1406 1st Avenue, directly across from the iconic Market.

“For a lot of people, our store is a destination spot,” Colleen Echohawk (Pawnee, Athabascan), Eighth Generation CEO said. “We also get a lot of people who happen across our store and are drawn in by our beautiful designs. For folks heading up to Alaska, there is a big emphasis on Alaskan Native culture on the ship, so their minds are primed and ready for a store like ours.”

The 2023 Seattle cruise season is expected to be the biggest season ever as it welcomes 290 sailings and over 1.4 million revenue passengers between April and October. Many cruise passengers spend some time before or after their cruise exploring Seattle and the region and supporting local businesses.  Overall, cruising from Seattle supports nearly $900 million a year in local economic activity and approximately 5,500 local jobs.

Reclaiming the market

Nooksack artist, activist, and entrepreneur Louie Gong founded Eighth Generation in 2008 when he started customizing shoes in his living room. In 2015, Eighth Generation became the first Native-owned business in the U.S. or Canada to sell Native-designed wool blankets, reclaiming a market that had been dominated by non-Native companies using fake “Native-inspired” designs for over a century, and growing the business of their artist partners through the Inspired Natives® Project.

Eighth Generation opened its flagship store in Pike Place Market in 2016 and launched its own made-in-house wool textile line in 2020 — another first for a Native-owned business. Three years ago, Gong sold the business to the Snoqualmie Tribe and Echohawk took over as CEO in 2022.

The Native-designed wool blankets are designed by Native artists from across the country, spanning the East coast to Alaska. Their Gold Label Collection of Native-designed wool blankets are manufactured in Eighth Generation’s Georgetown studio.

“We are so honored to work with artists who trust us to bring authentic Native art and design into the marketplace,” Echohawk said.

With its 100% native-designed products, Eighth Generation provides an ethical, artist-centric approach while addressing the economic impact of cultural appropriation. Although the brand does the majority of its sales online, and takes orders from all over the United States, Canada, and other countries; and the brick-and-mortar store is an important part of Eighth Generation’s business.

Skyrocketing sales

During the pandemic, Eighth Generation saw sales at its Pike Place Market store drop as tourism and cruises came to a halt and it reduced hours to just a couple days a week.

“It’s sobering to think about all that business we missed out on,” Echohawk said. “But we had a strong online presence already so we were able to invest in online marketing and that was really great for us.”

Traditionally, Eighth Generation makes the most sales during the summer months. In July 2022, with Seattle cruise and tourism making a strong comeback after the pandemic, Eighth Generation had its best month of sales ever. With the store back open seven days a week, sales shot up 684% as compared to a year ago.

“We are very actively aware of cruise passengers and tourists in the city and do a lot of thinking about how we can get them to become lifelong customers,” Echohawk said. “We see a huge influx of people coming into our store during the summer. We are excited to connect them to true American art and to give them the opportunity to buy from incredible Native artists and help create economic sovereignty.”

Supporting Native art

Echohawk is proud that Eighth Generation offers something unique for tourists and showcases the artists behind the products.

“If a tourist is going into any other store, they will likely find a lot of fake Native products,” Echohawk said. “We sell authentic Native art that you can have in your home. Every home should have Native American art in it. Some people say ‘I’m not Native. Can I still buy Native art?’ Absolutely! People’s homes reflect their values and Native art is an amazing way to do that.”

Eighth Generation also invites customers to learn about the artists who created the beautiful products that are for sale. When people walk into Eighth Generation, not only will they see beautiful Native-made products, they will find signage that shares more information about the products, artists and their stories, and tribal backgrounds.

“People stand around reading the signs like they are in a museum, but we go beyond the museum experience,” Echohawk said. “You learn about this artist and now you can buy a blanket, mug, or art piece by them. It’s a different way of engaging with American art and people really respond to it. It’s a very different kind of store. People want to be a part that special feeling.”

The staff are passionate about the products they sell. They take the time to tell customers who the artist is, provide information about the tribes and where they are from, and share funny stories if they have met the artist.

“It’s an opportunity for our staff to share their culture and history. The Native community is proud to have come from tribes that really resisted and decided to thrive, despite colonization,” Echohawk said.

Photos courtesy of Eighth Generation.

Colourful Kwakwaka’wakw designs featuring plants, hummingbirds and insects are adorning the streets of “Victoria,” as 400 banners with work by artist Lou-ann Neel are installed around the city. 

Neel has created five new pieces of art as part of the city’s summer banner program, which has been running since 1970 and commissions new banner designs for the downtown core and James Bay every two years.

Neel descends from the Mamalillikulla, Da’nax’daxw, Ma’amtagila, ‘Namgis and Kwagiulth tribes of the Kwakwaka’wakw (Kwak’wala-speaking people) and is originally from Alert Bay. 

Spending so much time in the “Garden City” where she now resides, Neel wanted to show appreciation for the natural plants and animals that make up the local ecosystems. 

The designs are also contemporary and whimsical, with smiling faces on the insects happily going about their work.

“People always look at Native art, and it’s very immersed in tradition and comes from traditional stories,” Neel said in an interview with IndigiNews.

“We are a living culture, and we create fun things too.” 

The animals featured on the five banners are ladybugs, bumblebees, hummingbirds, dragonflies and a “crystal garden” design which brings various creatures together.

In a statement for each design, Neel shows appreciation and gratitude for each of these beings.

“I wanted to acknowledge dragonflies for the great work they do feeding on mosquitoes and gnats — something gardeners appreciate a great deal,” she says in the artist statement for her dragonfly banner. 

“Their beautiful array of colour complements any floral environment. In many Indigenous cultures, the dragonfly is often recognized as a symbol of positive change, as it contributes to positive growth and change each and every day.”

Now that the banners are complete, Neel said she is looking forward to focusing more on carving as a medium, something that’s entrenched in the history of her family’s artistic process. 

Carving holds a special place for Neel as she wishes to challenge the narrative that carving was something only men did. In her travels along the coast, Neel has confirmed that women carved in many communities along the coast. 

“Amongst our people, we know that women carved,” she said.

Neel believes that carving is important to her not just because of family tradition, but also to serve as a positive role model for upcoming generations and to challenge patriarchal narratives. 

“I don’t want young people to have that kind of messaging,” she said. “I want them to have encouraging messaging.”

Living culture, not artifacts

Along with encouraging the next generation of artists, Neel is passionate about advancing the narrative for Indigenous art, and bringing art traditions into the present moment.

As a repatriation specialist at the Royal BC Museum, she said it’s important to trouble the term “artifacts” — which implies that the items are central to the past rather than being utilized in ceremony and culture to this day.

“I got really concerned about that, because it was part of erasure. We have already been so erased in terms of our roles as artists,” she said.

Neel said many museums and other colonial institutions are hesitant to repatriate items for various reasons, mostly because they represent valuable assets and a financial bottom line. 

“We’re talking about truth and reconciliation. To me repatriation [is] reconciliation in motion”

Pressure in recent times has led to many beginning the complicated repatriation process, including the Vatican after Pope Frances recently spoke about the importance of returning stolen “artifacts.”

“I think that they’re starting to see that there’s a larger moral issue, but also a legal one,” Neel said. “If you don’t have the receipt, you shouldn’t be holding it”

Neel said there’s still a lot of exploitation of Indigenous artists, which is why she has been a vocal advocate for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People (UNDRIP).

“I don’t know what it would take to get the political will to make the changes that are necessary. There is no shortage of really sharp people that could make this happen if the politicians would just line up behind it,” she said.

One example of what she is hoping to see would be the creation of Indigenous maker spaces in Indigenous communities that would serve as a space for artists to collaborate and create — not necessarily just for commercial artists, but for those who just want to create and continue traditions. 

“The last time we came close to having the luxury of that kind of support and that kind of space was … between the ‘70s and ‘80s,” Neel said. 

“When we used to have the Indian Arts and Crafts societies, every province in Canada had one and then the funding got yanked out from everyone in the mid ‘80s.”

As Neel nears 60, her encouraging message to young Indigenous artists is to keep learning, as she is still personally excited about all the things she has yet to learn. 

“The more I learn, the more I can express, and the more I can manifest my art. There is nothing more exciting than that.” 

In its 26th year, Once Upon a Time in the West art show in Cripple Creek begins with a moment of reflection. Dedicated to the founder, the late Rod Little Bear Sutton, the show bears a sense of spirituality inherent to Native American culture.

“Rod was a Crow Holy Man and the butterfly was his strongest totem, also known as spirit animal,” said Jon Zimmer, the show’s co-founder.

In honor of his friend, Zimmer and the artists have subtitled the show “The Year of the Butterfly” to include works from Sutton’s collection, the leathers and family buffalo skull with a butterfly on the forehead.

“We’ll have one of his ‘Little People,’ as well, but not for sale,” Zimmer said. “It’s a connection; I think about him just about every day. He was such a special person.”

While Sutton died last year, he “reappeared” as a swallowtail butterfly in the lower parking lot of the Heritage Center, Zimmer said. “He simply ‘flutters’ by as we set up the show he so dearly loved. I have no doubt Little Bear is checking on us.”

To honor the title, Zimmer included butterflies in two of his works for the show, the watercolor “Good Morning, Little Bear,” and, in pencil, a Native American child with a wistful look.

After two years of absence, Matt Atkinson will be among the artists and will include prints of his pencil/chalk “Merciful Release,” which he drew on printed vintage paper. The work, of two ravens and a skull, reflects Atkinson’s connection to his Native American heritage.

“The raven is a mystical connection to the Great Spirit,” Zimmer said. “To me, the skull represents a return to Earth.”

Atkinson creates realistic scenes of the American West and tells stories of once upon a time on the land. His works are vibrant and speak of western vitality, in the present as well as the past. In his works, Atkinson uses brushes and paints that he inherited from his grandmother, according to his website.

Along with Zimmer and Atkinson, Vera Egbert, Sofia Balas, Ken Keegan, Tim Penland and Michelle Rozell will show their works.

Distinguished by the Native American Blessing and Smudge Ceremony the evening before the opening, Zimmer will include a story he heard as a child from his grandmother.

“One Wolf is evil. It is angry, envious, jealous, sorrowful, greedy, arrogant, full of self-pity and resentment. It lies and cheats. It is egotistical,” Zimmer reads from the Blessing. “The other wolf is good. It is joyful and at peace. It is full of love and hope. It is serene, humble, and kind. It is compassionate.”

Upon hearing the story, the child Zimmer asks his grandmother which wolf won.

“The one you feed, my child – the one you feed.”

Thirteen local artists have a new show at Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum. The artists are a part of a queer, CHamoru art collective called Guma’ Gela’.

So’le Celestial is a trans and queer multimedia artist and one of the collective’s founding members. They were born and raised in Guahan — or Guam — but moved to Spanaway, Washington, with their family in 2013.

“As Indigenous Pacific Islanders, we’re always connected to our native lands and our seas and our ancestries, no matter how far we go from the island. So it’s like a grounding point for us,” Celestial said.

Celestial explained the name Guma’ Gela’ roughly translates to “Home of Queer” in the CHamoru language.

The group formed in 2018 and their art has been a part of a number of events around the city including Legendary Children, a celebration of the QTBIPOC community, and house and ballroom culture. Most recently, they won a grant from the Wing Luke Museum which let them put together this yearlong exhibit. The show features art across a wide range of mediums including sculpture, printmaking and weaving.

The Guma’ Gela’ show is curated around the theme: “part land, part sea, all ancestry.”

“I think one of our hopes is people are able to come in and find themselves. You can be able to find home, and how we express how we found home with each other, and within our culture, that people are able to connect to your ancestry, no matter where they come from…,” Celestial said.

“And be able to leave with the confidence and curiosity to explore what identity and sexuality is and how it can look because there are so many different ways to look.”

Celestial said the CHamoru art collective has been thinking about the idea of home a lot. Just a couple of weeks ago a super typhoon struck Guam causing lots of structural damage. Being so far away has been difficult for all of them.

“There’s a lot of tenderness, a lot of grief that we’ve all been holding,” Celestial said. “A lot of what you’ll see in the exhibit also is honoring of grief and life as well.” 

Celestial contributed several musical pieces that play throughout the show representing the land, sea and ancestry. The exhibit will be on display through May 2024.

The Aboriginal Australians of Mornington Island in the Gulf of Carpenteria are known internationally for their dancing, their art—and their languages.

The island off the north coast of the country has a population of about 1,200, made up mostly of the Lardil people, the original inhabitants, and the Kaidildt people, who were relocated there in the 1940s. Even though the island is poor, geographically isolated, and remote—more than 500 miles of Outback from Darwin and 1,400 miles from Sydney—the islanders’ culture is famous worldwide.

Lardil dancers performed at the opening of the Sydney Opera House in 1973, and a troupe regularly tours Europe and America. Mornington Island painters are represented in galleries in every Australian state capital, including the work of the late Sally Gabori, who exhibited in Europe. And the Lardil language remains one of the most studied Aboriginal languages, even though its last fluent speaker died almost two decades ago.

“There are many incredible things in Lardil,” says Erich Round, a linguist at the University of Surrey in England, who studies Lardil and Kayardilt, the language of the Kaidildt.

One reason Lardil remains an active area of linguistic research is because celebrated American linguist Ken Hale visited Mornington Island in the 1960s, during which time he learned Lardil and made almost 1,000 pages of notes. Later, as a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he related Lardil to influential theories of language that were emerging there.

The language has a number of fascinating features. Lardil people, like many Aboriginal peoples, have strict rules about family relationships, and these rules are woven into the grammar of the language (as seen in the challenging puzzle below). Another unusual feature is that Lardil is the only language outside Africa that uses the “click” sound as part of its phonology. (To be more accurate, the click sound only appears in words in Damin, a ceremonial language of about 200 words that is spoken only by Lardil men.)

“Boys would learn the ceremonial language when going through the ceremony from boyhood to manhood. It is very, very interesting because it has all the hallmarks of an invented language,” says Round. “It has an interesting system of data compression where a whole lot of words get crushed down.”

According to the 2021 Australian Census, there are about 300 speakers of Lardil on Mornington Island, though Round says all of them are native English speakers, and speak Lardil to various degrees as a second language. “I met the last fluent speaker of classical Lardil in 2005, and he passed away later that year,” he says.

About 160 Aboriginal languages are still spoken in Australia, and most are endangered. In Mornington Island, the success of Lardil artists and dancers is increasing pride in the Lardil language, too. “Lardil is spoken in everyday conversations by a lot of people, but it’s mainly the older folk who speak Lardil regularly,” says John Armstrong, arts centre manager at the Mirndiyan Gununa Aboriginal Corporation on Mornington Island. “We work with the local school on [Lardil] language lessons that include Kaidildt as well.”

He adds that the island has about 35 active artists, and that the sale of Aboriginal art is the largest contributor to the local economy. “The Kaidildt works are very colourful and abstract, whereas the Lardil works are more muted colours of ochres, browns, and blacks.” As well as exhibiting through galleries in Australian cities, islanders sell their work through their own online gallery.

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