Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives

Dyani White Hawk is a Minneapolis-based artist who works across cultures in a variety of media to expand notions of abstraction within art history and bring attention to Native contemporary culture.

The exhibition begins with some of White Hawk’s earliest paintings and mixed-media works including beadwork from 2011 to 2016. These works highlight White Hawk’s merging of abstraction with Lakota art forms.

White Hawk uses the shape of the moccasin vamp, the top of the soft leather shoe, as a motif to stand in for the human figure.

Encircling the photographic series is the video installation "LISTEN" (2020), consisting of eight videos, each presenting Native women on their ancestral land speaking their indigenous language.

"LISTEN" emphasizes the lack of representation of Native languages in North America. While visitors may not be able to understand what the women are saying, the sounds will become more familiar as languages indigenous to this land.

Continuing to engage issues of visibility of Native art practices, White Hawk’s "Carry" series (2019 and 2020) pushes against the notion that Native art must have a utilitarian aspect.

The three sculptural vessels in the "Carry" series are too large to be used in a traditional ceremonial way, emphasizing that work by Native artists can embody the “function” of being artwork.

Beaded works on panel in this gallery, "Untitled (All the Colors)" (2020) and "Untitled (black and gold)" (2019), combine the moccasin and doorway motifs.

The horizontal painting "Stealing Horses Back" (2016) includes vintage beads and painted geometric shapes to create abstracted forms of horses.

Painted to mimic quill- and beadwork by Native female makers, the paintings in this gallery are part of the "Quiet Strength" (2016–2020) series.

This body of work honors indigenous creatives by emphasizing the important and ancestral practice of embroidery and quillwork. The "Quiet Strength" series is also the first in which White Hawk’s mimicked quillwork is the only subject of the paintings.

This technique is reflected on an even larger scale in the "Quiet Strength" series.

As a series, "Quiet Strength" draws attention to organic metals and materials as a way to question why certain elements and gifts of the Earth—and of people—are valued over others.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives begins with work detailing the importance of recognizing Native contributions to Western abstraction and ends with questioning the value systems in place regarding the materials given by the Earth and Native women. In between are conversations about Native erasure and visibility. The exhibition engages with a sense of hope for future and continued efforts toward understanding Native history and culture and enacting ways of embracing narratives told by Indigenous people. White Hawk’s work expresses a shared formal and conceptual practice and acknowledges the significance of Indigenous art as American art. Speaking to Relatives creates important conversations and focuses attention on the appreciation of Native influences to continue to move forward by recognizing and honoring the contributions Native people, ideas, and art-making practices have on art in America.