Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives

Speaking to Relatives is a ten-year survey exhibition of sculpture, painting, photography, video, and installation focused on the work of Minneapolis-based contemporary artist Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota, born 1976).

Dyani White Hawk in her studio by David EllisKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

In the painting "Dream" (2012), White Hawk depicts vibrating white and blue horizontal lines of various thicknesses that also appear in many Western Stripe Paintings.

Overtop these lines is the arched moccasin motif with a circular design of blue, white, and red acknowledging the four directions in Lakota symbolism.

Dream (2012) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

The red and blue sections can be read to represent cardinal directions north, south, east, and west, with the white sections specifying northwest, northeast, southwest, and southeast.

Collectively, White Hawk creates a conversation between the history of Lakota abstraction and abstract easel painting.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White Hawk and Tom JonesKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

"Connections" (2015) pairs two moccasins resembling two figures in an embrace.

White Hawk uses a trompe-l’œil painting technique, a visual illusion in two dimensions, which adds depth and makes the foot opening appear three-dimensional.

This opening can be thought of as a doorway opening onto new understandings and interpretations.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

The moccasin and doorway arches collapse into a flatten arc shape in "Untitled (Turquoise)" (2017) and "Untitled (blue and gold)" (2016).

White Hawk’s use of this solid, opaque arc shape represents the strong connections between Lakota art forms and abstract painting, emphasizing that Native art influenced abstract painting; they are historically connected.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White Hawk and Tom JonesKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

White Hawk’s recent projects "I Am Your Relative" and "LISTEN" (both 2020) address the erasure of Native language and people in contemporary American society. "I Am Your Relative" (2020) is made up of nearly life-size photographs of six women standing together.

This work creates a sentence to highlight misconceptions of Native women (“I am more than your desire, more than your fantasy, more than a mascot”) and hopes for understanding in the future (“I am ancestral love prayer sacrifice, I am your relative”).

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White Hawk, Tom Jones, and Razelle BenallyKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White Hawk and Razelle BenallyKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

"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.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White Hawk and Tom JonesKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view)Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White Hawk and Tom JonesKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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

Untitled (Quiet Strength VI) (2019) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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.

Seeing (2011) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

In "Seeing" (2011), White Hawk mirrors Western abstract “stripe painting” to create a “+” shape. In the space filling the “+” she has painted photorealistic clouds.

Looking closely, the white lines of the stripe painting are made of small, detailed brushstrokes that mimic quillwork.

Untitled (Quiet Strength VI) (2019) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

White Hawk added “She Gives” to the titles of a few works in the "Quiet Strength" series, stressing the significance of women’s and the Earth’s contributions to sustaining life.

The bold inclusion of turquoise paint in "She Gives (Quiet Strength VII)" (2020) honors the importance of this color and material to Southwestern tribes’ metalsmithing and adornment.

She Gives (Quiet Strength IV) (2018) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

In "She Gives (Quiet Strength IV)" (2018), White Hawk infuses copper color in the delicate painted marks representing quillwork.

She draws attention to the fact that copper is undervalued compared to gold, even though copper has significant medicinal properties important to the overall makeup of the earth.

Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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 (installation view) by Dyani White HawkKemper Museum of Contemporary Art

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.

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