V O I C E S Indigenous Storytelling - NYU Kimmel Windows

March 22, 2019

Event Details

Date: March 24, 2019 10:00 am – September 10, 2019 11:00 am
Venue: NYU Kimmel Windows
Categories: Exhibitions

EDITED 7/30/19:

Please check out this interview based on the work in the show!

https://thekimmelwindows.tumblr.com/post/186589268991/meet-jeremy-dennis-indigenous-fine-art

The show remains on view from March 24 to May 5th, and July 1 to September 10, 2019 and is visible 24/7 in the window vitrines along Laguardia Place and the corner of West 3rd Street.

Opening Reception: April 17th, 5:30-8pm

Lobby of the Skirball Performing Arts Center: 566 LaGuardia Pl, New York, NY 10012

Voices features Native American and Indigenous artists from across Turtle Island, also known as North America. This exhibition showcases the work of artists who aim to express their personal stories in terms of both personal identity and contemporary social life in North America. Originally conceived by graduate students in the Museum Studies Program at NYU, the exhibition grew in scope and vision to include 11 Indigenous and Native American artists in a collaborative project that is an exercise in creativity and exploration. It is not intended to present an exhaustive view of Indigenous art and curation, or the Indigenous experience in general. Instead, it presents an opportunity to share artists’ narratives in the medium of photography. The exhibition offers artists the opportunity to share their own stories on their own terms, without having to relate to a prescribed motif.

We designed this exhibition to allow each work to speak for itself, and for artists to share their own stories. We encourage viewers to engage with each piece individually and really take in the artist statements and stories that are attached to them.

We hope VOICES inspires you to think about your own narrative and your own relationship with the occupied territory you live on.

About the Artists:

Jeremy Dennis

is a contemporary fine art photographer and a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation. In his work, he explores indigenous identity, assimilation, and tradition from the lens of a millennial.

Dennis was one of 10 recipients of a 2016 Dreamstarter Grant from the national non-profit organization Running Strong for American Indian Youth. He was awarded $10,000 to pursue his project, On This Site, which uses photography and an interactive online map to showcase culturally significant Native American sites on Long Island, a topic of special meaning for Dennis, who was raised on the Shinnecock Nation Reservation. He also created a book and exhibition from this project. Most recently, Dennis received the Creative Bursar Award from Getty Images in 2018 to continue his series Stories.

In 2013, Dennis began working on the series, Stories—Indigenous Oral Stories, Dreams and Myths. Inspired by North American indigenous stories, the artist staged supernatural images that transform these myths and legends to depictions of an actual experience in a photograph.

Residencies: North Mountain Residency, Shanghai, WV (2018), MDOC Storytellers’ Institute, Saratoga Springs, NY (2018). Eyes on Main Street Residency & Festival, Wilson, NC (2018), Watermill Center, Watermill, NY (2017) and the Vermont Studio Center hosted by the Harpo Foundation (2016).

He has been part of several group and solo exhibitions, including Stories, From Where We Came, The Department of Art Gallery, Stony Brook University (2018); Trees Also Speak, Amelie A. Wallace Gallery, SUNY College at Old Westbury, NY (2018); Nothing Happened Here, Flecker Gallery at Suffolk County Community College, Selden, NY (2018); On This Site: Indigenous People of Suffolk County, Suffolk County Historical Society, Riverhead, NY (2017); Pauppukkeewis, Zoller Gallery, State College, PA (2016); and Dreams, Tabler Gallery, Stony Brook, NY (2012).

Dennis holds an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, and a BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University, NY.

Frank Buffalo Hyde grew up surrounded by traditional Native American art. He had artists on both sides of his family and his parents met at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). From an early age, however, Hyde knew he wanted to make his own mark.

When he did eventually decide to embrace the visual art world — after playing in a rock band and trying his hand at writing — it was with the overt intention of making his audience think twice about the way they see Native Americans. Case in point: Hyde called his first show at the Museum of Contemporary Native Art Ladies and Gentlemen, This Is the Buffalo Show and filled it not only with his namesake animals, but with buffalo soldiers, the character Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, and an image of buffalo wings.

Hyde’s satirical, pop-culture-soaked, take-no-prisoners approach puts him in a unique place among Native artists. He has called out celebrities like Gwen Stefani for wearing feathers and depicted traditional ceremonies complete with a row of mobile phones caught in the act of documenting — or perhaps stealing — the dancers’ images. He knows his work will make some audience members uncomfortable. In fact, he hopes it does.

The artist has said: “When working on a piece, I tap into the universal mind. The collective unconsciousness of the 21st century. Drawing images from advertisement, movies, television, music and politics. Expressing observation, as well as knowledge through experience. Overlaping imagery to mimic the way the mind holds information: non linear and without seperation. I don’t need permission to make what I make. Never have…no artist should.”

Nadema Agard/Winyan Luta/ Red Woman (Cherokee/Lakota/Powhatan), lives and works in New York City. She was educated at New York University with a Bachelors of Science Degree in Art Education and Columbia University, Teacher’s College, where she received a Master of Arts Degree in Art and Education.Her watercolors, pastels acrylic on canvas pieces, incorporate soft sculptural forms and mixed media. Her work as an artist has an individual style and a cosmic subject with a global agenda from an Indigenous perspective. Her work also combines traditional Indigenous sacred feminine iconography and spirituality with traditional Western European media. Part of the New York City contemporary Native art scene for more than 35 years, she has shown her work at the Gallery of the American Indian Community House and has been part of Native artists groups like Riders With No Horse and American Indian Artists, Inc. (AMERINDA). Nadema has shown in over 60 group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally since 1979.Agard’s pieces are in the collections of Amerindian Circle, Native American Contemporary Art Collection of the University of Wisconsin, American Indian College Fund, Locus Media Gallery, and those of private collectors throughout the world.She was recently profiled as an artist in the publication entitled, No Reservations: New York Contemporary Native American Arts Movement by David Bunn Martine.

Janice Toulouse is an Ojibwe artist painter and instructor, born and raised on Serpent River First Nation, Northern Ontario. She lives in Orangeville, Ontario and visits often in France. She has exhibited and presented her art internationally for 38 years. She earned an MFA from Concordia University, Montreal. She formerly taught painting and contemporary Indigenous art at Emily Carr University of Art in Vancouver for twenty years. Toulouse’s ongoing artistic concern is revising history from an Indigenous perspective. Her artworks investigate the intersection of written history, nature and spiritual beliefs that exist in her visual culture. Toulouse’s multimedia artworks have been shown nationally and internationally in Canada, U.S.A, France, and Italy. Toulouse is a recipient of several awards, Indigenous Artist Reveal Award in 2017, and the Smithsonian, National Museum of the American Indian award and residency in New York for her project “From Manhattan to Menatay”.

Krystyna Printup (New York, 1983) is a Brooklyn based artist, curator and designer whose work investigates her identity as an Indigenous woman and the issues surrounding ideal representations of the Native American community. A member of the New York Tuscarora Turtle Clan, Printup references her tribal history throughout her paintings, sculptures and design work referencing American Indian folk art, pop culture stereotypes, and objects of everyday life which are then combined with her own traditions. She has exhibited at Marianne Boesky gallery; Mehr Midtown Gallery; Schafler Gallery; White Box Gallery; The Hole; Year 08 Art Fair: London and at the Whitney Biennial 2017. She is a winner of the Art for Progress Artist search and a recipient of the Norwood Arts Club Founding Members Arts Award & membership. Printup’s most current project was with The Company Store as a featured artist for their inaugural Fine Art Collation launch and is one of the feature 60 contemporary artist of NYC on the Art collecting app ARTFARE. Printup attended F.H LaGuardia High School for art in New York City. She received a BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY and a MLA from StonyBrook College, Stony Brook, NY.

Pena Bonita: Born and raised in the southwest, Pena Bonita now lives in New York City where she received her MFA from Hunter College, City University of New York in 1995. Bonita began her artistic career as a visual artist and began photography at age eight with an uncle in her grandmother’s attic, with a Brownie camera. Her work is reflective of Native American values and experiences. She has exhibited and lectured extensively throughout the United States and Canada. In 2004 she was a recipient of the National Foundation Book Award for her short story, Lotto Baby. Her work is held in numerous collections including the Thunderbay Museum, Thunderbay, Canada; Whoopie Goldberg; Colgate; Beth Israel Medical Center; and Long Island University.

Everton Tsosie www.tohsnez.wix.com/fireart is an abstract figurative artist-painter who lives and works in New York, NY. A native of Albuquerque, N.M., his work is contemporary and features a Native American style to his audience. He is a descendant of the Great Navajo Tribe hailing from Whitehorse Lake, N.M. He works with oils and acrylics on the canvas. He envisions an abstract quality with line and gestural strokes and brings a authentic-modern Native American perspective to his artwork.

Navajo singers, social gatherings, everyday drama, whether abstractly or naturally, his paintings and drawings conveys creations brought to the modern world with strong colors evenly spread by contour and irregular lines. As the artist adds, “ I work from experience in life and absolutely find it striking how drama can be expressed on a plain canvas with abstraction or naturalism. I love how my authenticity discloses to America that Native Americans are still here and creating!”

Tsosie began his artwork since childhood and has had his first show at La Mesa Elementary in Albuquerque. Since then he grew up with a love of the arts and went on to graduate from the University of New Mexico with a BFA in an emphasis towards painting and drawing.

One of the exhibitions he has been in is Time and Space are None of Our Business in Downtown Albuquerque at the CFA Gallery. He also has created a book cover for Native American Author Sheila A. O’Quirke titled Taking Back the River.

American Indian Community House Window

The mission of American Indian Community House (AICH) is to improve and promote the well-being of the American Indian Community and to increase the visibility of American Indian cultures in an urban setting in order to cultivate awareness, understanding and respect.

AICH is a 501©(3) not-for-profit organization serving the needs of Native Americans residing in New York City.

AICH was founded in 1969, by Native American volunteers as a community-based organization, mandated to improve the status of Native Americans, and to foster inter-cultural understanding.

AICH membership is currently composed of Native Americans from 72 different tribes. Native American migration between urban centers and reservations demonstrates the inter-relatedness of all Native Americans, and from this reality emerges the recognition that our issues and concerns are truly shared.

Sparrowhawk: Sparrowhawk Transcendental Story Artist, bases his life and art in accordance to his own saying; Aspirations, Visions & Dreams are only Illusions until We our Brave enough to give them Shape & Form into Reality.

He brings roots and primordial traditions into art of our time with Paintings & Sculptures aka “tangible illusions,” and Transcendental Story Telling performance.

Sparrowhawk’s sources of inspiration and muses come from the petroglyphs, philosophies and stories of his ancestors and the energies of every unique soul he meets. www.vimeo.com/TheSparrowhawk

The show remains on view from March 24 to May 30, and July 1 to September 10, 2019 and is visible 24/7 in the window vitrines along Laguardia Place and the corner of West 3rd Street.

VOICES was Co-Created By: Emily Rogers ‘19 Gallatin, Larisa Pecego ‘19 GSAS

Exhibition Design by: Pamela J. Tinnen

Organized by: Art in Public Places and the Emerging Curator Project, NYU

With Support From: New York University Museum Studies Department, Jane Anderson, Eugenia Kisin, The American Indian Community House, the Native American and Indigenous Student Group at NYU.

VOICES is part of NYU’s Art in Public Places initiative, sponsored by the Office of the Provost and is the first iteration of NYU’s University-wide Emerging Curator Incubator Project, which awards funding and exhibition space for annual exhibitions conceived of and executed by our graduate students.