Native American Heritage Month
Discover works by Native American artists in SAMA's permanent collection
The Anthropophagic Effect, Garment no. 2San Antonio Museum of Art
Explore Native American artists' work in SAMA's collection
Learn more about artists Jeffrey Gibson, Joe Harjo, and Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds with the San Antonio Museum of Art.
Jeffrey Gibson
Jeffrey Gibson is a multimedia artist who is a member of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians and of Cherokee descent. His vibrant objects and installations often re-appropriate material culture and incorporate text, abstraction, and traditional artforms, such as beadwork.
His artwork blurs the lines between Indigenous craft, Minimalism, Modernism, queer and popular culture, addressing the exclusion of Indigenous histories and traditions in American art.
The Anthropophagic Effect, Garment no. 2 title refers to the concept of anthropophagy—a cultural cannibalism whereby colonized cultures consume that of the colonizers to create a new, dominant visual tradition.
The Anthropophagic Effect, Garment no. 2San Antonio Museum of Art
The Anthropophagic Effect, Garment no. 2
For this hybrid garment, Gibson researched river cane basket weaving, birch bark biting, and porcupine quillwork, merging Indigenous craft with fashion atelier.
Joe Harjo
Joe Harjo is a multidisciplinary artist from the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma. Through photography, sculpture, performance, and installation, Harjo explores Native American identity, debunks stereotypes, and asserts the vibrant, contemporary presence of Native communities.
"The Only Certain Way: Faith asks the viewer to consider the historical divide between acceptance and resistance, speaking to what is forced upon as opposed to what is created as a response." —Joe Harjo
The Only Certain Way: Faith (2019) by Joe HarjoSan Antonio Museum of Art
The Only Certain Way: Faith
Towels bearing designs drawn from Native American cultures are thoughtfully displayed in memorial flag cases—a housing typically reserved for US flags to honor military service. Instead, this sculpture is a powerful monument to Indigenous cultures and ancestors.
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds
Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds is a multidisciplinary artist, professor, and Traditional Elk Warrior Society leader, of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Nation of Oklahoma.
Heap of Birds works in a variety of media including print and drawing installations, paintings, and public art interventions that often employ text and vernacular signage to advocate for Native American communities.
Trail of Tears (2005) by Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of BirdsSan Antonio Museum of Art
Trail of Tears
Borrowing the format of parking signs, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds confronts the memory of the Trail of Tears. Using the candid language of the common signpost, Edgar Heap of Birds asks the viewer to stop and consider the past’s continued influence on the present.
The work references the US government’s 1830 Indian Removal Act, which sanctioned the forcible removal of 100,000 Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole peoples from their ancestral lands, resulting in devastating loss of human life and heritage.
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See it at SAMA
See work by Jeffrey Gibson, Joe Harjo, Hock E Aye Vi Edgar Heap of Birds, and more at the San Antonio Museum of Art.
