Native Arts Panel
Nicholas Galanin, Ashley Holland, Candice Hopkins, and Steven Loft
Moderated by Dyani White Hawk
Thursday, March 29, 7–8:30 pm
Cinema, Free
Recent political and cultural events (such as the Walker’s own installation and subsequent dismantling of Sam Durant’s Scaffold and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests) have elicited a new wave of critical conversation about the state and future of contemporary Native arts practice.
This program is intended to add to and extend conversations that have been happening online, among peers, and in live panels across the country and will address issues such as the reception and influence of Native arts, their role in activism, and their survival in the face of continued misunderstanding, misappropriation, and marginalization.
About the Panelists
Photo: Larry McNeil (Image: courtesy Nicholas Galanin)
Multi-disciplinary artist of Tlingit ancestry, Nicholas Galanin’s work reflects a connection to land, identity, and ideas of cultural amnesia and appropriation. He has studied jewelry design at London Guildhall University and indigenous visual arts at Massey University in New Zealand. His solo and group exhibitions have been presented around the world and his work has been featured in arts publications such as Art in America and Hyperallergic. Galanin currently lives and works in his hometown of Sitka, Alaska.
An award-winning artist of Sicangu Lakota and European descent, Dyani White Hawk reflects cultural aesthetics in her work by incorporating parts of her ancestry and experiences. Using materials such as paint, beads, brass sequins and porcupine quills, White Hawk combines contemporary art themes with the traditional to create paintings and mixed-media works. White Hawk studied studio arts at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and has participated in discussions on diversity, representation, and the importance of Native voices. She was a Gallery Director and Curator for the All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis before becoming a full-time studio artist in 2015. She currently lives in Shakopee, Minnesota.
Native and Jewish artist, curator and writer Steven Loft has served as curator and artistic director for several galleries and their exhibitions across Canada on Indigenous art and aesthetics. Loft has also written extensively on its surrounding topics for arts magazines and catalogues, and co-edited the book Transference, Technology, Tradition: Aboriginal Media and New Media Art (2005). Born in the City of Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, he was the first Curator-In-Residence, Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada. A Mohawk of the Six Nations, Loft now serves as the Director, Indigenous Arts at the Canada Council for the Arts.
Curator and writer Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation. Hopkins has held curatorial positions across museums such as the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) and the National Gallery of Canada. She was awarded the Ramapo Curatorial Prize for the exhibition Every Stone Tells a Story: The Performance Work of David Hammons and Jimmie Durham and her written work on history and art have been published across educational institutions and cultural publications like The Fillip Review and Mousse Magazine. Originally from Whitehorse, Yukon, she lives and works in New Mexico.
Citizen of the Cherokee Nation, Ashley Holland is currently a doctoral student at the University of Oklahoma in Native American art history. She was a former assistant curator of native art at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis where she co-curated the exhibition Conversations: Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship featuring the work of selected fellows who are Native American or First Nations artists. She has held a research internship at the University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art supporting exhibition development and object research on the Cherokee materials held in the museum’s permanent collection. She is also a writer and has published in Art in America.