Jeremy Dennis

November 12th, 2025 – January 24th, 2026

Jeremy Dennis is a contemporary fine art photographer, an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, and the founder and lead artist of Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc., a nonprofit art space and residency program on the Shinnecock Reservation dedicated to uplifting Indigenous and BIPOC artists.

His work centers Indigenous identity, culture, and the legacies of colonial assimilation, using photography to stage cinematic, otherworldly narratives rooted in Native oral stories, history, and contemporary experience.

Dennis is a Stony Brook University alumnus (BA ’13) and Forty Under 40 honoree (2017), and earned his MFA from Pennsylvania State University (2016). His photographs have been exhibited nationally and internationally, with solo and group exhibitions at The Armory Show, Expo Chicago, ZONAMACO FOTO in Mexico City, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art. Notable exhibitions include Speaking With Light at the Denver Art Museum, and In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Among his numerous honors are a 2025 NYSCA Grant, Pollock-Krasner Foundation Residency Fellowship, Andy Warhol Visual Arts Residency (2023), Getty Creative Bursary Award, and Running Strong for American Indian Youth Dreamstarter Grants (2016, 2020). Most recently, he was awarded the Artist to Artist Fellowship from the Art Matters Foundation.

His curatorial projects include Shinnecock Speaks at Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc., and Eternal Testament at The Church of Sag Harbor.

Dennis has participated in prestigious residencies such as the Andy Warhol Visual Arts Program (2023), Santa Fe Art Institute (2021), Yaddo (2019), Watermill Center (2017), and the Vermont Studio Center/Harpo Foundation Residency (2016).

He currently serves on the advisory boards of The Boys & Girls Club of the Shinnecock Nation, The Bridgehampton Museum, The Church of Sag Harbor, WNET Group’s THIRTEEN/WLIW Community Advisory Board, and Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc.

Learn more about Jeremy Dennis and his work here.

PRESENTED BY

Angelina Jolie

Atelier Jolie

Catharsis Arts Foundation

CURATED BY

Quannah ChasingHorse

Claude Grunitzky

Did You Hear That?, 2025

Material: Archival Inkjet Print
Dimensions: 20 x 24 inches

In Did You Hear That?, Jeremy Dennis crafts a surreal, psychologically charged scene that distills settler paranoia into a single moment of nocturnal fear. A woman lies in bed, gun drawn and eyes wide, pointing into the darkness as if sensing an intruder. Yet the threat she imagines is already present: a Native figure leans in, whispering into her ear. Drawing on the motif of skeletons whispering in classical art — memento mori reminders of mortality — Dennis replaces the specter of death with the haunting presence of history. The Indigenous figure is not breaking in but already in the house, quietly asserting a truth long denied: this land was never empty. This dreamlike confrontation flips the script of invasion and possession. The woman’s fear mirrors a broader cultural anxiety — the settler fear of being held accountable, of past and present colliding. The gun, a symbol of self-defense, becomes a futile gesture against an unshakable truth. In this intimate domestic space, Dennis explores how the myth of ownership unravels, revealing the deep unease at the heart of the American home. Did You Hear That? invites viewers to listen — not for danger, but for memory — whispering just out of sight, already inside.

I Just Got Home, 2025

Material: Metal Print
Dimensions: 20 x 30 inches

In I Just Got Home, Jeremy Dennis flips the script on the iconic cowboy-and-Indian trope with humor and quiet confrontation. A woman dressed in full cowboy regalia, rifle slung over her shoulder, steps into a darkened room — only to be met by a Native figure who switches on the light, catching her in the act. The sudden illumination evokes the familiar dynamic of a parent waiting up, exposing late-night behavior with a disapproving flick of the switch. But here, the intervention is historical as much as personal: the Indigenous presence exposes the mythology of the cowboy, not as hero, but as intruder. Dennis stages this moment to challenge the American imagination that celebrates the cowboy as a symbol of pride and conquest while erasing the violence that role represents. By placing the Native figure in control of the light — both literally and symbolically — the work reclaims narrative power and reframes the relationship between these two archetypes. I Just Got Home becomes a quiet reckoning, calling viewers to reconsider not only who is “coming home,” but who has always been there, waiting, with the truth already lit.

Land Claim, 2019

Dimensions: 16 x 20 inches

Land Claim confronts the ongoing transformation of Indigenous territory into spaces of leisure, luxury, and recreation. In this dynamic image, a woman plants a brightly colored beach umbrella into the sand—a casual, familiar act of staking temporary ownership—while a Native figure dives toward her like a baseball player sliding into home base, attempting to intercept the claim. The moment is frozen at the intersection of comedy and urgency, turning a scene of seaside relaxation into a powerful commentary on the history of stolen land repurposed for pleasure. Jeremy Dennis uses the language of play and sport to expose the deep ironies of settler entitlement and the ease with which land theft has been naturalized in everyday culture. The beach, often seen as a neutral or carefree setting, becomes a contested site where histories of dispossession resurface beneath the surface of summer ritual. Land Claim merges humor and resistance to highlight how acts of recreation—building, sunbathing, planting an umbrella—are embedded in colonial logics of occupation. Through its bold choreography and charged symbolism, the photograph reminds viewers that the struggle over land is not a relic of the past but an ongoing contest over visibility, belonging, and the right to exist freely on ancestral shores.

Monolith, 2019

Dimensions: 16 x 20 inches

Monolith draws inspiration from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey to imagine a moment of quiet defiance and collective power long denied to Indigenous men. In the photograph, a group of Native figures stands gathered around a dark, towering structure—a visual echo of Kubrick’s mysterious monolith—radiating both reverence and unease. The image references the 17th-century colonial laws on Long Island that forbade Indigenous men from assembling in groups, driven by settler paranoia that such gatherings were signs of rebellion. In this staged scene, Jeremy Dennis restores that impossible vision, allowing what history suppressed to reappear. By merging science fiction and historical reality, Monolith becomes a meditation on fear, control, and the resilience of Indigenous community. The men’s gathering—once criminalized—feels both sacred and futuristic, suggesting that the very act of being together, of existing visibly, is a radical gesture. The black monolith itself stands as a symbol of forbidden knowledge and the unknown potential that colonialism sought to contain. Through this haunting reimagining, Dennis transforms an absence into presence, turning what was once prohibited into a scene of power, unity, and quiet resistance that transcends time.

No Trespass, 2018

Material: Metal Print
Dimensions: 16 x 24 inches

No Trespass reinterprets a scene from Jurassic World, replacing the film’s tense standoff between a park ranger and raptors with a modern-day confrontation over land and authority. In Jeremy Dennis’s photograph, a hiker or property owner stands defensively at the edge of a marked boundary, gesturing to hold back three Native figures who approach from the other side. The image stages a negotiation that is at once absurd and deeply revealing—a dramatization of how property lines, laws, and fences continue to police Indigenous presence on ancestral land. By referencing a blockbuster moment of man versus nature, Dennis exposes how colonial fear and control have simply evolved into new forms. The Native figures, portrayed not as predators but as rightful inhabitants, reclaim a space that has been artificially restricted. The property owner’s posture—part fear, part authority—reflects the lingering anxiety of those living atop stolen territory. No Trespass fuses humor, pop culture, and political critique to question who truly belongs, who defines danger, and what it means to enforce ownership over a living landscape. In this imagined encounter, Dennis turns spectacle into social commentary, transforming the familiar language of Hollywood tension into a reckoning with the ongoing realities of colonization.

Who Wins?, 2019

Material: Metal Print
Dimensions: 20 x 30 inches

In Who Wins?, Jeremy Dennis presents a stark and thought-provoking image that challenges the common narrative of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ in the context of early colonial history and the Indian Wars. The image juxtaposes a figure in the foreground, clad in camo and holding a rifle, with a Native American figure in the distant background. The positioning of the figures emphasizes the stark divide between the aggressor and the defender, but Dennis uses this visual contrast to question the very concept of ‘victory’ in such a violent, unjust conflict. The Indian Wars are often framed as a binary struggle between the ‘winners’ — the European settlers and their descendants — and the ‘losers’ — the Indigenous peoples who were forced to fight for their survival and sovereignty. But Who Wins? subverts this simplistic narrative, asking the viewer to consider who the real winner is when a group of people is compelled to engage in a battle simply to defend their homes and way of life. The rifle-wielding figure in the foreground represents the historical aggressor, while the distant Native figure evokes the struggle of defending one’s land against overwhelming force. Dennis suggests that the true cost of such ‘victories’ is not just the loss of land and life, but the erasure of culture, identity, and sovereignty. In reexamining this historical conflict, Who Wins? forces us to question what true victory means in the face of systemic injustice and the relentless fight for survival.