I.M.N.D.N. Native Art for the 21st Century at the Art Gym, Marylhust University
About the Artists
Rick Bartow
Tribal affiliation: Wiyot
Rick Bartow draws from Native American mythologies often combining human and animal imagery and will show several of his wood sculptures in I.M.N.D.N. Bartow has exhibited nationally and internationally, including exhibitions at the National Museum of the American Indian in Manhattan, The White House, Washington, D.C. (organized by the Heard Museum); Indian Reality Today, Westfaliches Landesmuseum fur Naturkunde, Munster, Germany; Head, Heart and Hands, organized by the Kentucky Art and Craft Gallery in Louisville, Kentucky, and traveling to the American Craft Museum, New York, New York; Indian Time at the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and The Museum of Art & Design's Changing Hands 2: Art Without Reservation, New York, New York. In 2012, Bartow completed a commission for the Smithsonian, the monumental 27' sculpture, "We Were Always Here," welcomes visitors at the entrance of the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, DC.
Joe Feedersen
Tribal affiliation: Okanagan member of Colville Confederated Tribes
Washington artist Joe Feddersen will be represented in I.M.N.D.N. with the hanging glass tapestry Charmed. Like many of his glass vessels and prints, Charmed combines indigenous symbols with imagery borrowed from the urban landscape like power towers and the striping of parking lots. Feddersen's work is in the collections of the Seattle Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, Eitlejorg Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Nicholas Galanin
Tribal affiliation: Tlingit
Alaskan artist Nicholas Galanin is a concept driven artist inspired by generations of Tlingit creativity. Like Red Star, Galanin's work is included in Cross Currents at Denver's Center for the Visual Arts. Galanin works in many visual arts media, including sculpture, video and performance. He draws on indigenous technologies and global experiences and challenges the tired prescriptions of the "Indian art world" and it's institutions. Galanin's work can be found in the collections of the Peabody Essex Museum, Anchorage Museum, Burke Museum, Seattle, WA and the Portland Museum of Art.
Hachivi Edgar Heap of Birds
Tribal affiliation: Cheyenne and Arapaho
Internationally recognized for his political and site-specific public installations, Hachivi Edward Heap of Birds' work uses text and public signage on a large scale to entice and confront the viewer. For Marylhurst, twelve signs from the Native Hosts series will be installed along Furman Drive on campus. Like the other Native Host series, created for New York and British Columbia, in the Oregon series twelve Oregon tribes (Umatilla, Siletz, Grand Ronde and Coquille, for example) welcome visitors to Oregon. The artist's work is exhibited worldwide and he has received awards from the National Endowment of the Arts, Rockefeller Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust and the Andy Warhol Foundation. Heap of Birds' artwork was chosen to represent the Smithsonian's Museum of the American Indian at the 52nd Venice Biennale.
Terrance Houle
Tribal affiliation: The Blood Tribe
Calgary artist Terrance Houle is known for his work exploring contemporary indigenous themes and issues. He has a broad practice, which includes performance, photography, video/film, music, painting and tools of mass dissemination such as billboards and bus signage. Houle is exhibiting photographs and collaborating on an installation with Wendy Red Star for The Art Gym exhibition. In 2012 he started the National Indian Leg Wrestling League of North America. Houle is a graduate of the Alberta College of Art and Design. He was awarded Best Experimental Film in Toronto's 2004 ImagineNative Film Festival. In 2006, the City of Calgary awarded him the Enbridge Emerging Artist Award. Houle's art, film and performance work has been shown in Canada, the United States, Great Britain and Australia, including at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian in New York City and Western Front in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Peter Morin
Tribal affiliation: Tahltan
Peter Morin uses his art to honor his home, and the stories and words of his people the Tahltan Nation. Morin uses performance, ceremony, and visual art to examine indigenous identity, d-colonization and language. The Art Gym exhibition will include artifacts and photo documentation from Morin's performances. His work and performances have been presented by museums and galleries throughout Canada, including the Royal Ontario Museum, in Toronto; Open Space in Victoria, and Urban Shaman in Winnipeg. Morin, who is based in Vancouver, British Columbia, is also an active educator and curator and has organized exhibitions at the Museum of Anthropology, Western Front, the Burnaby Art Gallery.
Wendy Red Star
Tribal affiliation: Crow
Portland-based Wendy Red Star explores the intersection of life on the reservation and the world outside. She is creating a new body of work for I.M.N.D.N.— the White Squaw series, using as source material the covers of E.J. Hunter's racist, sexist mass-market paperback books, published in the 1980s with titles like Buckskin Bombshell, Dakota Squeeze, and Twin Peaks or Bust. Red Star is also collaborating with Terrance Houle on a new installation for the show. Red Star's work is currently part of Cross Currents at the Metropolitan State University of Denver's Center for the Visual Arts and was recently included in Space is the Place at Disjecta in Portland, Oregon. Red Star's work has also been presented by the Fondation Cartier L'Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Research & Development, Chicago, Illinois; The Museum Tower at MOCA, Los Angeles, California; And/Or gallery, Dallas, Texas, The UCLA New Wight Gallery, Los Angeles, California; Domaine De Kerguehennc, Brittany, France; Hudson D. Walker gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts; and Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England.
Artists Bios