{"id":307002,"date":"2025-11-22T12:01:21","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:01:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/307002\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T12:01:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T12:01:21","slug":"25-native-american-artists-to-know","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/307002\/","title":{"rendered":"25 Native American Artists to Know"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tNative American artists have only recently gained a spotlight within the mainstream art world. For centuries, Native art was siloed on reservations, at trading posts, and in Indian markets, with no dedicated Indigenous commercial galleries either in urban Indian centers like New York City, San Francisco, Tulsa, or Phoenix or in other areas with significant Native populations. But lately they are finding their way into major galleries and institutions from Miami to New York to Venice.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tFor Native American Heritage Month, we delve into art from 25 Native American, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian artists. While not an exhaustive list, these artists represent a broad spectrum of artistic innovation spanning multiple generations and mediums, from foundational pottery to contemporary Ravenstail weaving. Shattering conventional ideas about fine art while honoring historical techniques and cultural knowledge, they underscore the vitality of Indigenous artists\u2019 contributions to contemporary art and the ongoing need to ensure that their voices and visions are centered in mainstream art discourse. <\/p>\n<p>\tSydney Akagi<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Sydney Akagi, Ceremonial Woven Tunic, Ravenstail and Chilkat, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/4R1B8881-copy.jpeg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist. Photo: Pat Barry.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tTlingit weaver Sydney Akagi (born 1989) employs traditional Ravenstail and Chilkat techniques and materials to create her signature masks, tunics, and mantles. Born in Southeast Alaska and an enrolled member of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, she made her first wall hanging in 2018, learning from her mentor, Lily Hope. The Chilkat formline motifs in weavings like Ceremonial Woven Tunic, Ravenstail and Chilkat, which Akagi created for the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, historically declared secular and social standing within the tribe; for Akagi, they often commemorate events in her own life.<\/p>\n<p>\tBernice Akamine<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tBorn in Honolulu, Bernice Akamine(1949\u20132024) was a Native Hawaiian sculptor, installation artist, and self-identified maker whose compositions in paper, glass, and metal critique the ongoing American colonial impact on Hawaii. Akamine received an MFA in glass and sculpture from the University of Hawaii in 1999. She is best known for her 87-sculpture installation at the 2019 Hawaiian Biennial, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.galerie103.com\/exhibition\/bernice-akamine.html\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Kalo<\/a>, honoring Hui Aloha \u2018\u0100ina, an organization supporting Hawaiian sovereignty. Equally political, her work Papahanaumokua (2018) is a series of glass-tipped bullet casings filled with \u2018alaea, Hawaiian earth pigments that referred to the 2018 false missile threat alert received (but not taken entirely seriously) by locals conscious of the number of military sites on the main island. One of her later pieces before passing in 2024, Kapa Moe: Hae Hawai\u02bbi (2021), is a quilt of kapa bark protesting the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy.<\/p>\n<p>\tMelissa Cody<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"668\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Melissa Cody, Motherboard Vibrations, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/CODPT022-lo-res.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMelissa Cody (b. 1983) is a fourth-generation Navajo weaver whose brightly colored works connect weaving to video games\u2014both requiring singular focus and offering an escape from the monotony of childhood on the rez\u2014 the X- and Y-axes of her gridded patterns resembling games like Mario Kart and Pac-Man. Cody also adopts the visuals of glitches that recur in older electronic games, explaining, \u201cGlitches and separation of time and space happen; I like being able to kind of make them intentional.\u201d Her flamboyant style can be traced back to the matrilineal guild of weavers who fostered and apprenticed Cody in her youth, even as her work offers ever new definitions of the form.<\/p>\n<p>\tJeremy Dennis<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Jeremy Dennis, still from Hearthless: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Destitute), 2015\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Picture1-4x3-ratio.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tJeremy Dennis (b. 1990) is a Shinnecock photographer based on his Long Island, New York, reservation, known for staging revenge fantasies in his images. In his photo series \u201cNothing Happened Here\u201d (2016\u20132017), Dennis depicts modern white Americans struck by one or more arrows, evoking the paradox of settler violence and nonviolent ideologies: Whether the violence is direct or indirect, the existence of settlers on Native land is a perpetual confrontation and derailing of Native sovereignty. In his four-minute film Hearthless: Or (The Unexpected Virtue of Destitute) (2015), inspired by Homer\u2019s Iliad, Dennis draws parallels between the \u201cothering\u201d of the Greek epic protagonist and that of Native peoples. The short, a collage of clips from such films as Dances with Wolves and The Outlaw Josey Wales, reflects on the contrast between Native and non-Native lived experience in the United States while endowing the films\u2019 stereotyped characters with new complexity.<\/p>\n<p>\tDemian Din\u00e9Yazhi\u2032<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"230\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Demian Din\u00e9Yazhi\u2032, we must stop imaging apocalypse\/genocide + we must imagine liberation, 2024, installation view, Whitney Biennial, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/DineYazhi_02_we_must_stop_imagining_apocalypse_genocide_we_must_imagine_liberation_2024_Neon-sign-sc.jpeg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tDemian Din\u00e9Yazhi\u2032 (b. 1983) is a trans nonbinary artist belonging to the Zuni Clan Water\u2019s Edge and Bitter Water clans within the Navajo Nation. Their work has decried extractive and performative investment in Indigenous artists, and in a recent BOFFO residency on Fire Island, they examined settler colonialism through a queer lens. The project culminated in a littoral spoken-word performance and two banners, one stating \u201cStolen + colonized \/ sacred + ancestral \/ UNKECHAUG LAND\u201d and the other \u201call we know is our ancestors were as wild as comets and cosmic wind.\u201d Their prose also appeared in \u201cEncoded,\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/art-news\/news\/an-indigenous-takeover-of-the-met-asks-who-should-be-writing-art-history-1234757699\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">a virtual reality exhibition<\/a> in the Metropolitan Museum\u2019s American Wing, superimposed on a landscape painting, flashing between \u201cwe demand resources over acknowledgments\u201d and \u201cwe desire survival over statements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\tTyler Eash<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Loreum (Tyler Eash), Angel\/K\u00e1kkini #4, 2022\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/B14F3D28-3BAA-401D-AA17-4DC5C642E659.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tMaidu and two-spirit (\u201cthird gender\u201d) multidisciplinary artist Tyler Eash (b. 1988) works primarily in performance, painting, and sculpture to elevate postcolonial expressions of queerness, class, and Indigeneity. His work employs historical and new materials and often focuses on the body. Produced by Eash\u2019s alter-ego Loreum and recalling ecofeminist works of the 1970s, Angel\/K\u00e1kkini #4 (2022) is both landscape and ethnography\u2013\u2013a triptych painted on cowhide that comments on the artist\u2019s California hometown. The purple, pink, white, and black top section conjures both the night sky and the California hills; the central wings, rendered in black, tan, and white, represent the darkness of Marysville\u2019s poverty and drug problems; and the base evokes the state\u2019s fires of recent years. Parabole II is a satellite dish reworked in plaster resin, auto paint, and abalone shell\u2013\u2013known as \u201cgrandmother shell\u201d among West Coast tribes.<\/p>\n<p>\tJeffrey Gibson<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Jeffrey Gibson, they teach us to be sensitive and to trust our instincts issi \/ awi \/ deer, 2025\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Installation-View_they-teach-us-to-be-sensitive-and-to-trust-our-instincts_issi_awi_deer_2025.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Eugenia Burnett Tinsley\/The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tIn 2024 Mississippi Choctaw and Cherokee artist Jeffrey Gibson (b. 1972) became the first Native American to represent the United States at the Venice Biennale. He is a self-described painter whose works employ scale, color, and material to dismantle artificial divides between Native and non-Native, human and animal, and celebrate relationality among living beings. In Gibson\u2019s \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/massmoca.org\/event\/jeffrey-gibson-2024\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Power Full Because We\u2019re Different<\/a>\u201d (2025), an immersive installation at MASS MoCA on view through September 7, 2026, he employs bright ribbon-embroidered fabrics, metallic-colored coils, and ethereal chiffon to explore the fluidity of gender roles in Native societies. In his four <a href=\"https:\/\/www.metmuseum.org\/exhibitions\/the-facade-commission-jeffrey-gibson\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Metropolitan Museum fa\u00e7ade<\/a> sculptures honoring a deer, coyote, squirrel, and hawk, on view through June 9, 2026, he invites viewers to understand these beings\u2019 insights\u2014the squirrel\u2019s foresight, the hawk\u2019s perspective for crucial decisions, and so on.<\/p>\n<p>\tLenny Harmon<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"533\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Lenny Harmon, Lifted Journey, 2025\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Lifted-Journey.jpeg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLenny Harmon (1983), a Lenape mixed-media artist residing in Philadelphia, draws from historical traditions but is mainly self-taught. His Vision of Division (2025) combines a repeated photograph of an elder in powwow regalia with a bifurcating red paper strip affixed with silver discs. Lifted Journey (2025) is a nonrepresentational landscape in shades of yellow, black, white, and red, framed in red, pink, baby blue, and gold stripes evoking a traditional blanket, and embellished with a black-and-white photograph of a Native couple with their horse and teepee skins and poles. Harmon is collected by museums including the Heard Museum in Phoenix and is one of the few recognized contemporary Lenape artists today.<\/p>\n<p>\tSky Hopinka<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"225\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Sky Hopinka, still from Anti-Objects, or Space Without Path or Boundary, 2017\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/ANTIOBJECTS_01.png\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tSky Hopinka (b. 1984) is a member of the Pachanga band of Luise\u00f1o Indians in Southern California and the Ho-Chunk Nation. A 2022 MacArthur Foundation Grant recipient and an assistant professor at Harvard University, the artist is lauded for his work in language reclamation and multimodal documentary film. His linguistic revitalization work began in college when he took Chinuk Wawa\u2013\u2013a language local to the Lower Columbia River Basin where he was raised\u2013\u2013ironically\u2013\u2013to satisfy a foreign language requirement. His film Anti-Objects, or Space Without Path or Boundary (2017) juxtaposes clips of Native acting and nature, graphic film stills, and audio from conversations with elders. His intention was to redesign storytelling and language transmission from the stale and moribund anthropological records in university archives into dynamic media accessible to contemporary community members.<\/p>\n<p>\tPatrick Dean Hubbell<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Patrick Dean Hubbell, You Showed Us How to Keep Going Past Failed Attempts, 2025\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Hubbell_You-Showed-Us-How-To-Keep-Going-Past-Failed-Attempts.jpeg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Gerald Peters Contemporary.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tPatrick Dean Hubbell (b. 1986), a Din\u00e9 artist, draws parallels between deconstructed canvases and blankets, which are ubiquitous in Indigenous gifting cultures. Your Perseverance Taught Us to Rise to Each New Day (2025) Hubbell\u2019s contribution to \u201cThe Canvas Can Do Miracles,\u201d a current exhibition at Austin Contemporary (on view through January 11, 2026), consists of draped canvases painted with bright acrylics. In another work, Within the Darkness, the Stars in the Night Sky Came to Reclaim Their Stories and Their Songs (2023), five generic \u201cNative inspired\u201d blankets hung from a stretcher bar are spattered with white paint. Here, Hubbell lampoons cultural appropriation by using heritage brands like Pendleton and Ralph Lauren as he continues his critical engagement with white ideas about Natives.<\/p>\n<p>\tAthena LaTocha<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Athena LaTocha, Chimera, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/AL2024.1002_Chimera__Dartmouth-copy-1.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Collection of Mary &amp; Matthew Ho, Los Angeles. Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLandscape painting becomes literal in the works of Athena LaTocha (b. 1969), a Hunkpapa Lakota and Ojibwe artist based in Brooklyn. Previously a smaller-scale painter, she now creates monumental pieces by laying resin-coated photographic paper on the floor and then pouring and diffusing pools of ink, mounds of soil, and other materials, allowing them to permeate the surface before scraping off the detritus.Referencing the history of tribal lands, from Mexican mesas and Ozark bluffs to Louisiana wetlands, LaTocha\u2019s compositions have recently focused on New York City. LaTocha visits construction sites and cemeteries to collect materials and dirt once in contact with the city\u2019s original people. By doing so she creates a monument to the Lenape of New York (now of Oklahoma, Wisconsin, and Canada).<\/p>\n<p>\tLehuauakea<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"666\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Lehuauakea, K\u016bmauna, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Kumauna-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tLehuauakea (b. 1996) is a mixed-Native Hawaiian multidisciplinary artist whose work employs traditional materials and designs while gesturing to the complexity of mixed-Indigenous identity. Born in Portland, Oregon, in 1996 and self-identified as m\u0101h\u016bwahine, a Native Hawaiian third-gender identity, Lehuauakea developed a focus on traditional kapa-bark cloth painting while attending an all-Native Hawaiian school. She honed her artistic practice at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Oregon, where she developed her signature pieces inscribed with historical motifs. Lehuauakea\u2019s E Ho\u02bb\u0101la Ka Lupe: To Awaken the Kite (2022) honors traditional kites, or lupe, and related mythology, while Mele o N\u0101 Kaukani Wai (Song of a Thousand Waters) (2018) points to the need to integrate Indigenous knowledge into Western climate science.<\/p>\n<p>\tRachel Martin<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"500\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Rachel Martin, Bending the Rules, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/240710_EHM_HannahTraore_RachelMartin_0110_HR-copy-1.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tRachel Martin (b. 1954) is a Tling\u00edt artist and enrolled member of the Tsaagweide\u00ed, Killer Whale Clan, of the Yellow Cedar House (X\u0331aai Hit\u00b4) Eagle Moiety. She grew up in California and Montana and now resides in New York City. Working primarily in sculpture and drawing, Martin is an inheritor of the Pacific Northwest line drawing tradition, whose cosmological symbols\u2014like bears, fish, and frogs\u2014she places in feminist tableaux. Bending the Rules (2024), in colored pencil on paper with a collaged mask, features a bare-chested woman bent over backwards. Been Ready (2023) offers the same cheekiness, with a Tling\u00edt mask serving as the head of a woman in profile, her cutout legs caught in mid-sprint. The mask has a stuck-out tongue, Martin\u2019s gesture toward the figure of the trickster in Tling\u00edt mythology.<\/p>\n<p>\tMaria Martinez<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"326\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Maria Martinez, Julian Martinez, Bowl, n.d.\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SAAM-1966.27.14_1-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tKnown as the matriarch of Native American pottery, Maria Martinez (1887\u20131980) transformed Indigenous ceramics from craft into fine art though her black-on-black pottery technique. Working with her husband, Julian Martinez, and other family members from her home in San Ildefonso Pueblo, New Mexico, she achieved what few Native artists of her time could: widespread recognition in the art world. Her journey began with archaeology; she studied ancient pottery shards at a time when earthenware was being abandoned for Spanish tin and English porcelain. Martinez reinvented historic techniques, creating a distinctive style that art critics would later compare to modernist masters like Edward Hopper and Mark Rothko. Martinez\u2019s artistic achievements earned her historic recognition: she met four U.S. presidents, attracted the patronage of the Rockefeller family, and became perhaps the most famous Native American artist in history. Her timeless black pottery, with matte designs painted by Julian, continues to influence contemporary ceramics and stands as a testament to Indigenous innovation.<\/p>\n<p>\tKent Monkman<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"256\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Kent Monkman, History Is Painted by the Victors, 2013\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/History-is-Painted-copy_fc630a.webp\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Denver Art Museum. Artwork copyright \u00a9 Kent Monkman.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe Cree multidisciplinary artist Kent Monkman (b. 1965) is best known for injecting his Cree gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, into paintings that reference the styles of Hudson River School landscapes, Edward Curtis\u2019s photographic portraits, and Eugene Delacroix\u2019s realist figuration. Miss Chief\u2019s presence in the monumental paintings, often dressed suggestively in vertiginous heels and flowing fabrics, upends colonial notions of gender and interrupts the narratives codified by traditional Western tableaux. Monkman\u2019s current retrospective at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (on view through March 8, 2026) excavates suppressed histories of the United States\u2019 and Canada\u2019s colonial origins, offering viewers a reckoning with narratives long obscured.<\/p>\n<p>\tLouise Nez<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"337\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Louise Nez, Reservation Scene, 1992\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/SAAM-1997.124.189_1-000001-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Smithsonian American Art Museum.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tRenowned fourth-generation Din\u00e9 (Navajo) weaver Louise Nez (b. 1942) was born in Sand Springs, Arizona. In the 1980s, after creating hundreds of works using motifs developed in the 19th-century commercialization of Navajo rugs, she began producing woven images of life on the rez. Her best-known wall hanging, Reservation Scene (1992), features brightly colored figures crafting, herding, and traveling by 19th-century wagon. Inspired by her grandson\u2019s coloring books, Nez has also included dinosaurs in weavings like Dinosaur Pictorial Weaving (date unknown) retained by the Gochman Collection.<\/p>\n<p>\tSandra Okuma<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tSelf-taught beader Sandra Okuma (b. 1945) is a Luise\u00f1o and Shoshone-Bannock artist whose sumptuous beaded bags are influenced by her training as a painter and work as a graphic designer for the music industry. Hailing from the La Jolla Indian Reservation in California, she has been a fixture of the Santa Fe Indian Market since 1998. Her works, like this <a href=\"https:\/\/americanindian.si.edu\/collections-search\/object\/NMAI_412481\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">purse<\/a> owned by the National Museum of the American Indian, boast unexpected color palettes\u2014in this case, shades of ruby, saffron, and sky blue. Sandra shares a booth at the Santa Fe Indian Market with her daughter <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vogue.com\/article\/jamie-sandra-okuma-indigenous-beadwork-artists\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jamie Okuma<\/a>, a clothing designer; the two occasionally work together on collaborative projects. The pair\u2019s sophisticated designs have garnered appreciation in both the art and fashion worlds.<\/p>\n<p>\tVirgil Ortiz<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"320\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Virgil Ortiz, Master and Tics, 2002\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Val_8_3c3466.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tThe multimedia artist Virgil Ortiz (b. 1969), from Cochiti Pueblo in New Mexico, originally worked in ceramics, which he began learning from his mother at age six. Building on a historical style defined by black mineral and vegetable pigments and motifs drawn from the landscape and cosmology, Ortiz\u2019s interpretations are distinctly modern. In the past two decades he has expanded into new mediums, from painting and glass-blowing to fashion and interior design. Ortiz creates with \u00e9lan, introducing gender play, science fiction, and kink into his ceramic and glass vessels, busts, and figures. Master and Tics (2002) is a black, white, and red Cochiti clay triad of Monos figures: a two-headed horned being walking leashed four-legged creatures. Rise Up (2017), a black, white, and red clay vessel, shows Donald Trump riding a black snake, which traditionally represents fertility or an underworld connection\u2014though in this case it more likely reflects the reptile\u2019s broader Indigenous association with the Dakota Access Pipeline.<\/p>\n<p>\tJaune Quick-to-See Smith<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"247\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, I See Red: Indian Drawing Lesson, 1993\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/QTSPT129-lo-res.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the Estate of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tJaune Quick-to-See Smith (1940\u20132025), an enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, was a groundbreaking visual artist, curator, and activist. She worked tirelessly to break the \u201cbuckskin ceiling,\u201d helping pave the way for a new Native vanguard of Indigenous artists. Her vast oeuvre, developed over 50 years, combined incisive political humor with poeticism and spanned painting, collage, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. Her works gesture to the lands, cultures, and philosophies of Native peoples, asserting sovereignty in her representation of tribes\u2019 past, present, and future. A show she curated, \u201cIndigenous Identities: Here, Now &amp; Always,\u201d is currently on view at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, New Jersey. With more than 100 works by 97 artists, it is the largest contemporary Native American art exhibition to date.<\/p>\n<p>\tEric-Paul Riege<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"242\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Eric-Paul Riege, \u201cojo|-|\u00f3l\u01eb\u0301 ,\u201d installation view, The Bell, Brown University, 2025.\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/VIEW_24.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Julia Featheringill. Courtesy of the artist and The Bell\/Brown Arts Institute.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tDin\u00e9 multidisciplinary artist Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994) honors traditional Navajo modes of making, interpreting them through craft-store materials and in collaboration with family members. Riege\u2019s work particularly salutes matriarchal weavers like his great-grandmother, who is featured in his installation, ojo|-|\u00f3l\u01eb\u0301 (2025), on view through December 7 at Brown University\u2019s Bell Gallery. The installation also includes a wall-mounted squash blossom necklace created from gray synthetic material, a suspended and empty upright loom warp, and multiple long earrings constructed from faux fur, leather, and plushy fabric. In a three-hour performance, Riege paced the length of the installation, mimicking the movements of a loom\u2019s shuttle and whipping fringed and jingle-adorned items at the feet of a trickster-like figure.<\/p>\n<p>\tSara Siestreem<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"470\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Sara Siestreem, transtemporal clam basket, 2022\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Siestreem_transtemporal-clam-basket4-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Elizabeth Leach Gallery, Portland, Oregon.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tSara Siestreem(b. 1976)is a Hanis Coos artist based in Oregon. The Pratt MFA graduate\u2019s works include ceramics, photography, weaving, painting, and installation. Skyline (2024)is a series of traditional Hanis Coos baskets cast in clay and topped in gold, evoking the commodification of Native culture by modern interior design. Minion (2024) is composed of four ceramic black and white ceremonial caps underpinned by cascading scarlet beads, referencing systemic violence against Indigenous women and girls. Un-ring Bells (2013) incorporates photographs and representations of oyster shells Siestreem found along the local Coos and Millicoma Rivers\u2019 shores long after the extinction of local tribes, the effect of white settlement and industrial fishing. Siestreem\u2019s work gestures at both the presence and absence of Native communities and their relationships with the land in modern American life.<\/p>\n<p>\tRose B. Simpson<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"300\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Rose B. Simpson, Seed, 2024, installation view, Madison Square Park Conservancy, New York, April 11\u2013September 22, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/RBS-MSPC-2024-v1-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Jack Shainman Gallery. Photo: Elisabeth Bernstein.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tRose B. Simpson (b. 1983) is a multimedia artist known for her ceramic and metal sculptures, installations, and performance pieces. Born in 1983 in Santa Clara Pueblo, New Mexico, Simpson comes from a matriarchy of ceramicists. Though accepted to Dartmouth, she chose to attend the University of New Mexico to maintain her formative ties to the land. She earned MFAs from the Rhode Island School of Design and the Institute of American Indian Arts and studied pottery in Japan and South Korea. Her work innovates at the intersection of red clay pottery and figurative sculpture, pushing the boundaries of Pueblo art. A current installation at the de Young Musuem in San Francisco consists of two classic cars customized by the artist.<\/p>\n<p>\tKay WalkingStick<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"267\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Kay WalkingStick, North Rim Temple, 2023\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Kay-WalkingStick-North-Rim-Temple-2023-Oil-on-panel-in-two-2-parts-101.6-x-203.2-x-5.1-cm-40-x-80-x-.jpeg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Hales, London and New York. Photo: JSP Art Photography.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tPainter and sculptor Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935) is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma with Cherokee\/Anglo heritage. Featured at the 2024 Venice Biennale, she is currently experiencing a significant moment of recognition. In her long career WalkingStick has embraced a variety of styles and formats, though her touchstone, since encountering the feminist and American Indian movements of the 1970s, has always been her identity as a Native American and biracial woman. She has produced abstract paintings like Archetypal Image (1975), which found commonality between the shapes of teepees and the nets hanging under NYC bridges; Pop Art-inflected nudes; and diptychs featuring symbols on one side and landscapes on the other. Most recently she has made landscape paintings inscribed with Indigenous motifs, suggesting that the terrain is being viewed from a pre-contact vantage point. As she told the New York Times in 2023, the American landscape she is painting\u2014from the Grand Canyon to Niagara Falls\u2014was depicted by 19th-century white artists as empty. Of course,\u201d she told the New York Times in 2023, \u201cit was not empty; it was populated. . . . I think of [my paintings] as a reminder that we are all living on Indian Territory.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\tDyani White Hawk<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Dyani White Hawk, Visiting, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Visiting-full-in-situ-web-copy.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the Artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN. Photo: Rik Sferra.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tContemporary multidisciplinary artist and curator Dyani White Hawk (b. 1976) is of Sicangu Lakota and white descent. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, she attended the Institute of American Indian Arts and the University of Wisconsin\u2013Madison and was the curator at the Native-owned All My Relations gallery in Minneapolis from 2010 to 2015 before turning solely to studio practice. White Hawk\u2019s work applies Lakota traditions like porcupine quillwork, beadwork, and rawhide painting to critiques of a white artistic hierarchy that has historically subordinated Native art. She also does installations, photography, and performances that promote the Lakota philosophical and moral principle mit\u00e1kuye oy\u00e1s\u2019i\u014b: We are all related. She brought this concept to life in early 2024 with the totemic rectangular sculpture Visiting (2024), comprising four collaged panels of beadwork; facing an impossible deadline, White Hawk recruited her family and community to finish the commission, which was shown at the 2024 Armory Show in New York City.<\/p>\n<p>\tEmmi Whitehorse<\/p>\n<p>\t\t\t<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"507\" src=\"https:\/\/www.artnews.com\/wp-content\/themes\/vip\/pmc-artnews-2019\/assets\/public\/lazyload-fallback.gif\" class=\"attachment-medium size-medium\" alt=\"Emmi Whitehorse, Firelight, 2024\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/WHIPT112-lo-res.jpg\" data-lazy- data-lazy-\/><br \/>\n\t\t\t\t\tImage Credit: Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph larva \/\/ a-font-body-m     \">\n\tA Navajo painter from New Mexico, Emmi Whitehorse (b. 1957) creates layered abstractions influenced by her rural upbringing. Her formative years grounded her practice in a traditional ecological worldview. \u201cIf you got sick and something was wrong, it meant that psychically you were falling out of rhythm with nature,\u201d she explains. \u201cSo you went about healing by surrounding yourself with beauty and nature; that applies to my painting.\u201d Whitehorse\u2019s meditative landscapes employ a personal symbology of place and time, her gradient washes suggesting both serenity and constant change. In a signature work, Firelight II (2024), she interweaves abstracted botanical forms, dotted lines, gridded axes, and surveillance drone symbols topped with infinity signs, creating a complex cartography that maps both physical and spiritual terrain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Native American artists have only recently gained a spotlight within the mainstream art world. For centuries, Native art&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307003,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[228,226,227,159067,159068,159069,229,159070,159071,88,159072,159073,159074,159075,159076,159077,159078,159079,159080,159081,159082,159083,70969,159084,159085,159086,159087,159088,159089,159090],"class_list":["post-307002","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-athena-latocha","tag-bernice-akamine","tag-demian-dinu00e9yazhiu2032","tag-design","tag-dyani-white-hawk","tag-emmi-whitehorse","tag-entertainment","tag-eric-paul-riege","tag-jaune-quick-to-see-smith","tag-jeffrey-gibson","tag-jeremy-dennis","tag-kay-walkingstick","tag-kent-monkman","tag-lehuauakea","tag-lenny-harmon","tag-louise-nez","tag-maria-martinez","tag-melissa-cody","tag-patrick-dean-hubbell","tag-rachel-martin","tag-rose-b-simpson","tag-sandra-okuma","tag-sara-siestreem","tag-sky-hopinka","tag-sydney-akagi","tag-tyler-eash","tag-virgil-ortiz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307002","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307002"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307002\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307003"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307002"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307002"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307002"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}