Sachi Yanari-Rizzo, Curator of Prints & Drawings
In 2022 Dyani White Hawk created one of the most memorable works of the Whitney Biennial: measuring 14 x 8’, Wopila|Lineage is a colorful geometric work consisting of over 500,000 glass beads in loomed strips adhered to painted aluminum panels. The composition brings together influences of Lakota and Northern Plains designs as well as the abstract paintings of Europe and the U.S.
An enrolled member of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe, White Hawk is of Sičangu Lakota, German, and Welsh ancestry. She grew up in Madison, Wisconsin and received her associate degree in elementary education from Haskell Indian Nations University. She took the opportunity to enroll in as many art classes as possible. She followed this up with a B.F.A. in 2008 from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, which is a public tribal land-grant college. In addition to learning traditional arts like beading and quillwork there, White Hawk took classes in art history and U.S. history taught from an indigenous perspective. Studying painting with Norman Akers had an enormous impact on her, and Akers encouraged her to return to Wisconsin for graduate school, where she obtained an M.F.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
White Hawk creates works both for her own cultural participation and for the art world. Lakota art’s aesthetics, symbols, and meanings deeply inform her studio work. Art history, art museums, and galleries historically excluded indigenous art or viewed it from an anthropological perspective. White Hawk seeks to honor indigenous women’s contributions to art, especially abstract art, and situate them in the art continuum.
In 2010 White Hawk created her first, and extremely time-consuming, work in porcupine quill on painted canvas entitled Tiošpaye. Subsequently, she began to explore other means of working that still conveyed the history of and honored the quill work tradition without taking months to create.
In 2019, White Hawk began favoring acrylic and bead paintings with a simple, central motif. In this untitled series she beaded the central form and set it against a painted striped background. The use of long, thin bugle beads relates to traditional porcupine quillwork and lane stitch beadwork.
The FWMoA’s new purchase, Adorned (Blue), was created during a residency at Crow’s Shadow, a printmaking workshop whose mission is to provide artistic and educational opportunities for Native Americans. The print continues White Horse’s Quiet Strength series of bead and painted works that she began in 2016. At first glance, the works in the series seem to be monochromatic paintings but, upon closer examination, the surface dances in the light.
White Hawk’s six color lithograph is made up of rows of vertical strokes that are sometimes straight or curve slightly to the left or right. She printed them in soft cream and bone colors and set them against gold leaf. The variability of the marks and tones is reminiscent of natural irregularity found in porcupine quills that were used to adorn clothing, moccasins, and jewelry. This historical form of art was traditionally made by specially trained indigenous women in North America.
In Adorned (Blue) the rectangular form contrasts with a blue ground that is graduated in tone and glows, reminiscent of the radiant color fields of Mark Rothko or color transitions found in Navajo weaving. During graduate school, White Hawk developed a love of abstract expressionism, color field painters, and some minimalists. Interestingly, she discovered that many of the artists she admired were looking at and collecting the work of Native American artists. At that time, however, the art world did not celebrate the creativity of these indigenous sources.
This juxtaposition was a means of exploring the intersection of Native and non-Native traditions. The gradient roll of blue ink appears to recess, and visually pushes the central patterned shape to the foreground. In this way, White Hawk brings indigenous art to the forefront visually and metaphorically, ensuring that indigenous artistic contributions are valued and included in art historical discourse.
White Hawk is the recipient of the prestigious MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2023), Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2021), and the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship (2019), among other awards. Her works is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Museum of Modern Art, St. Louis Art Museum, and Walker Art Center.
Experience FWMoA’s print collection Tuesday-Friday, 11am-3pm, or by appointment.