Wikipedia

Dyani White Hawk

Dyani White Hawk(full nameDyani White Hawk Polk) (born 1976) is a contemporary artist and curator ofSicangu Lakota,German,andWelshancestry based out of Minnesota.[1]From 2010 to 2015, White Hawk was a curator for the Minneapolis galleryAll My Relations.[2]As an artist, White Hawk's work aesthetic is characterized by a combination of modernabstract paintingand traditionalLakotaart. White Hawk's pieces reflect both her Western, American upbringing and her indigenous ancestors mediums and modes for creating visual art.

White Hawk's work has been featured in group exhibitions at theMinneapolis College of Art and Design,theCa' Foscari Universityin Venice, Italy, theMuseum of Contemporary Native Artsin Santa Fe, theInstitute of American Indian Arts MuseuminSanta Fe,andMinneapolis Institute of Art.Many of White Hawk's works have also been acquisitioned into the collections of theSmithsonian National Museum of the American Indianand theTweed Museum of Art.[3]In October 2023, she was named one of theMacArthur Fellowsto recognize her art "revealing the underrecognized yet enduring influence of Indigenous aesthetics on modern and contemporary art."[4]In April 2024, she received aGuggenheim Fellowshipfor Fine Arts.[5]

Early life and education

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White Hawk was born and raised inMadison, Wisconsin.Her mother,Sandy White Hawk,was adopted from theRosebud Indian ReservationinSouth Dakotato non-Native Wisconsin parents, and as a young child in Wisconsin, the artist had very little connection to her Rosebud family. It wasn't until she was a teen that she began learning about her Lakota ancestry and grappling with issues of heritage and identity. According to White Hawk "my life experiences have been a continual negotiation of both Western and Indigenous educations, value systems, and worldviews."[6]

White Hawk received her first undergraduate degree in 2003 fromHaskell Indian Nations University.In 2008, she earned a BFA in 2-D Studio Arts from theInstitute of American Indian Arts(IAIA), and in 2011 she graduated fromUniversity of Wisconsin-Madisonwith an MFA in Studio Arts.[7]

White Hawk credits her mother with encouraging her artistic talent at a young age, but the artist's first painting was completed as part of her IAIA admission portfolio. Her early artwork tends to borrow influence from popular culture and street art. White Hawk cites later influences ranging from abstract modernists such asMark RothkoandMarsden Hartley,to Native history traditional tribal art forms. Although she tends to favor artistic traditions specific to her Lakota tribe, White Hawk has also found influence in other Native artistic traditions, such asNavajoweaving.[8]

Work

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White Hawk is known for her easel-sized paintings that depict abstract compositions emphasizing saturated colors arranged in symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns. She often privileges patterns and lines that replicatequillwork,beadwork,and textiles. In the paintingSeeing(2010), for instance, the square canvas is divided into nine smaller squares to create a gridded composition. But the grid yields to deep blue sky peppered with cumulus clouds that appear to recede into the distance; this interruption to the grid is also contained by it, as the sky occupies the central cruciform shape of the composition. Appearing to overlap this firmament are four beige-and-blue striped squares that anchor the painting in each corner.[9]

Primarily through abstraction, White Hawk examines the relationship of traditional art making in Native American communities to more contemporary practices. Often, her work comments on the problematic minimizing of Native artists versus the recognition given to Western artists who take influence from Native art forms.[10]Moccasin toes, ledger drawings, blanket designs,porcupine quills,teepee formsand other Native American motifs often are the subjects of White Hawk's exacting oil paintings.[11]

Though thoroughly modern/contemporary in the expression of her ideas and themes, White Hawk, both as a curator and as an artist, explores her cultural heritage. She writes: "As a woman of Sicangu Lakota and European ancestry, raised among Native communities within urban American environments, my work is an investigation of communal and personal definitions. It is a journey into understanding the history of this land and our relationships with and within it."[12]Dyani White Hawk has exhibited work at theMuseum of Contemporary Native Arts,and the Indian Arts and Culture Museum. Her work has been collected by theAkta Lakota Museum,the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Union Art Collection, the Robert Penn Collection of Contemporary Northern Plains Indian Art of theUniversity of South Dakota[13]and theMinneapolis Institute of Art.[14]

White Hawk's work has been featured in group exhibitions at theMinneapolis College of Art and Design,theCa' Foscari Universityin Venice, Italy, theMuseum of Contemporary Native Artsin Santa Fe, and theInstitute of American Indian Arts MuseuminSanta Fe.[15]White Hawk is currently represented by Shiprock Santa Fe and Bockley Gallery.[16]

Dyani White Hawk's painting earned the "Best of Classification" award at the 2011Santa Fe Indian Art Marketand a First Place in painting at the 2011 Northern Plains Indian Art Market. She was a SWAIA discovery fellowship recipient in 2012.[17]In 2013, White Hawk was the recipient of the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship.[18]

Dyani White Hawk is known for her art that represents the Native American culture. White Hawk included several messages in her artwork."I am your Relative,"was created to depict eight Native women sharing their prayer and personal stories related to their Native land."[19]White Hawks art is located in many different museums and she also has participated in cross- cultural residences in at least 4 different countries.[20]White Hawk used"abstraction to bring American Indian tradition into a dynamic contemporary context."This is depicted in her artwork "I am your relative." White Hawk was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2014.[21]In 2015 and 2017, the artist was awarded a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Regional Artist Fellowship.[22]She is also a recipient of the 2018 Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists and the 2019 U.S. Fellowship for Visual Art.[23]

White Hawk was commissioned to createWopila | Lineage(2022), a 14-by-8-foot work composed of a half million glass bugle beads, for the 2022Whitney Biennial.[24]The piece's title references the Lakota word for deep gratitude. The piece, she states, is "meant to honor and show gratitude for the lineage of Lakota women and their contributions to abstraction, for Indigenous women at large and their contributions to art on this continent, for the generations of practiced abstraction that helped nurture and guide the work of the Western artists that were inspired by their work and brought that back into their studios with them as they created easel paintings. I'm pulling from those histories—from my own very specific history of Lakota abstraction, from Indigenous abstract practices at large, from abstract easel painting practices—and hoping to create opportunities for conversation around how connected those histories are and the fact that one doesn't happen without the other."[25]

Solo exhibitions

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  • 2016 -Storied Abstraction,Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN.
  • 2015 -Dyani White Hawk,Shiprock Santa Fe Gallery, Santa Fe, NM.
  • 2014 -Into the Light: Paintings and Prints by Dyani White Hawk,Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN.
  • 2013 -An Exhibition of Works by Dyani White Hawk,Gallery 110, University of South Dakota, Vermillion, SD.
  • 2012 -Dyani White Hawk,Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN.
  • 2011 -Inseparable,Art Lofts Gallery, Madison, WI.

Group exhibitions

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References

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  1. ^"Dyani White Hawk - Native Arts and Cultures Foundation".Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.21 October 2015.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  2. ^"Ace gallery director Dyani White Hawk Polk resigns AMRG post".Star Tribune.10 March 2015.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  3. ^"Dyani White Hawk Polk".First Peoples Fund.Retrieved2020-05-12.
  4. ^"MacArthur Fellows - MacArthur Foundation".www.macfound.org.Retrieved2023-10-05.
  5. ^"Three Minnesotans announced as Guggenheim Fellows".MPR News.2024-04-11.Retrieved2024-04-16.
  6. ^"Dyani White Hawk - Cowboys and Indians Magazine".Cowboys and Indians Magazine.17 December 2015.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  7. ^"Dyani White Hawk".Elmhurst Art Museum.Archived fromthe originalon 2017-01-17.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  8. ^White Hawk Polk, Dyani(April 24, 2014). "Dyani White Hawk Polk Interview".Native Report(Interview). Interviewed byStacey Thunder.Duluth:WDSE/WRPT PBS.
  9. ^"Painting - dyani white hawk".
  10. ^Hopkins, Candice. "Dyani White Hawk." McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Visual Artists, 2014-2015.
  11. ^"Last picture show for McKnight Foundation".startribune.com.Star Tribune. January 16, 2014.Retrieved5 January2016.
  12. ^Leaken, text by Suzanne Deats; principal photography by Kitty; Leaken, Kitty (2012).Contemporary Native American artists(First ed.). Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith.ISBN978-1423605591.{{cite book}}:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  13. ^"Bockley Gallery:: Artists:: Dyani White Hawk".bockleygallery.com.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  14. ^"Untitled (Quiet Strength I), Dyani White Hawk ^ Minneapolis Institute of Art".collections.artsmia.org.Retrieved2019-11-09.
  15. ^"Dyani White Hawk".Elmhurst Art Museum.Archived fromthe originalon 2017-01-17.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  16. ^"Dyani White Hawk - Cowboys and Indians Magazine".Cowboys and Indians Magazine.17 December 2015.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  17. ^"Swaia - Indian Market: About SWAIA/SWAIA Fellowships/2012 SWAIA Fellowship Recipients".swaia.org.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  18. ^"Last picture show for McKnight Foundation".Star Tribune.16 January 2014.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  19. ^"Dyani White Hawk: Speaking to Relatives".Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.2020-11-10.Retrieved2021-04-14.
  20. ^"Dyani White Hawk".Highpoint Center for Printmaking.20 October 2020.Retrieved2021-04-14.
  21. ^Foundation, Joan Mitchell (17 December 2014)."Joan Mitchell Foundation » News & Events » Joan Mitchell Foundation announces the 2014 Painters & Sculptors Grant Recipients".joanmitchellfoundation.org.Retrieved2016-03-05.
  22. ^"Realizing the Potential of Creative Vision".Native Arts and Culture Organization.25 September 2014.Retrieved5 March2016.
  23. ^"Dyani White Hawk".Highpoint Center for Printmaking.Retrieved2020-05-12.
  24. ^"Whitney Biennial 2022: Dyani Whitehawk".Whitney Museum of American Art.Retrieved2022-11-02.
  25. ^"Beauty Is Medicinal: Dyani White Hawk on her Whitney Biennial Artwork".Bockley Gallery.6 October 2022.Retrieved2022-11-02.
  26. ^Ahlberg Yohe, Jill; Greeves, Teri (2019).Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists.Minneapolis, MN: Minneapolis Institute of Art.ISBN9780295745794.
  27. ^"Indelible Ink: Native Women, Printmaking, Collaboration – UNM Art Museum".Retrieved2021-03-31.
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