Nicholas Galanin
2019.
Nicholas Galanin
Everything We’ve Ever Been, Everything We are Right Now
September 20–December 8, 2019
Opening Reception
Friday, September 20th
6–9 pm
Necessary Action: Activism and Artistic Practice
Panel Discussion
Tuesday, September 24th
7–9 pm
Hewitt Hall Room M113
Janet Wallace Fine Art Center
Macalester College
In Nicholas Galanin’s practice, activism for land and human rights is front and center. At times this intersects with his artistic career, as it did in the recent protest of the Whitney Biennial, where he and 7 other artists leveraged their work’s withdrawal to effectively cause the resignation of board member Warren B. Kanders. Joined by Twin Cities artists Jonathan Herrera Soto, Jim Denomie and Angela Two Stars. Dyani White Hawk Polk will moderate a conversation sure to ignite discussion on the role that activism plays in artists practices.
About the Exhibition
Artist Nicholas Galanin’s (Yéil Ya-Tseen) broad and ranging studio practice is one of simultaneous resistance and creation. In his work, Galanin offers “a perspective rooted in connection to land and an intentionally broad engagement with contemporary culture.” Galanin strategically “embeds incisive observations” and critical thought into his work, “investigating and expanding intersections of culture and concept in form, image and sound.”
Throughout his practice Galanin addresses the “impacts of pervasive capitalism, the continuation of colonization of human and non-human bodies, and misrepresentation and misappropriation of Indigenous culture,” in an effort to “evidence these damages.” In his exhibition, Everything We’ve Ever Been, Everything We Are Right Now, Galanin “disrupts outside definitions, limitations and representations of Indigenous culture, while illuminating and celebrating the value of Indigenous knowledge, aesthetics and continuum.”
Through diverse media — including jewelry, carving, video, sculpture, photography, music, installation, performance, works on paper and hide — Galanin creates for his “Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities while rejecting attempts to place living cultural work in the past. My totemic carving as contemporary as my video work; each speaking to contemporary concerns in different contexts.” His forthcoming exhibition at the Law Warschaw Gallery provides a thoughtful and critically Indigenous lens to view contemporary American culture and its complexity.
About the Artist
Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit-Unangax̂) has shown his work internationally, including recent exhibitions at the Native American Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, the Honolulu Biennial, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM), Crystal Bridges Museum of Contemporary Art (Bentonville, AR), the Northern Norway Art Museum (Tromsø, Norway), and recently received a mid-career retrospective at The Heard Museum (Phoenix, AZ). Galanin was selected for inclusion in the 2019 Whitney Biennial and, along with seven exhibiting artists, withdrew his participation to draw attention to the Whitney Museum of American Art’s vice chair Warren B. Kanders, a purveyor of military weapons and tear gas, and to demonstrate solidarity with activist efforts impacted by these weapons. Their protest ultimately led to Kanders’ resignation and the reinstatement of the artists’ work in the exhibition.
Galanin has apprenticed with master carvers and jewelers, earned his BFA at London Guildhall University in Jewelry Design, and his MFA in Indigenous Visual Arts at Massey University in New Zealand. He currently lives and works with his family in Sitka, Alaska.
Related Programming
Necessary Action: Activism and Artistic Practice
Featuring Nicholas Galanin, Jonathan Herrera, Jim Denomie and Angela Two Stars. Moderated by Dyani White Hawk Polk
7–9 pm
Tuesday, September 24th
Hewitt Hall Room M113
Janet Wallace Fine Art Center
Macalester College
In Nicholas Galanin’s practice, activism for land and human rights is front and center. At times this intersects with his artistic career, as it did in the recent protest of the Whitney Biennial, where he and 7 other artists leveraged their work’s withdrawal to effectively cause the resignation of board member Warren B. Kanders. Joined by Twin Cities artists Jonathan Herrera Soto and Jim Denomie, Dyani White Hawk Polk will moderate a conversation sure to ignite discussion on the role that activism plays in artists practices.
Towards Ending Museum Violence
December 5, 2019
7 pm
Hewitt Hall, Room M113
Janet Wallace Fine Art Center
Macalester College
1600 Grand Avenue, St. Paul MN
Artist Andrea Carlson and writer, editor, and poet, Heid E. Erdrich are long-time collaborators who often share strategies towards ending violent actions and policies caused by museums and institutions. Please join Carlson and Erdrich in conversation about their work decolonizing and Indigenizing museums, and learn about their proposals for organizational best practices.
About the Speakers
Andrea Carlson (Ojibwe) is a visual artist currently living in Chicago, Illinois. Through painting and drawing, Carlson cites entangled cultural narratives that come from institutional authority over objects and the people who make objects. Current research activities include Indigenous Futurism and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by the British Museum, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the National Gallery of Canada. Carlson was a 2008 McKnight Fellow and a 2017 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors grant recipient.
Heid E. Erdrich is Ojibwe enrolled at Turtle Mountain. She is an author of eight books of poetry and prose and is an interdisciplinary artist. Heid has curated dozens of art exhibits focused on Native American artists. Heid has collaborated with Rosy Simas Danse since 2016, and she has contributed to works choreographed by Ananya Dance, Zorongo Flamenco Dance Theater, and others. Heid has written plays produced by Pangea World theater. She performs her poetry across the country, sometimes collaborating with musicians, visual artists, and dancers. Her first exhibit as a featured artist was Skew Lines, May 2019, created in a dual residency with Rosy Simas for Soo Visual Arts Center in Minneapolis.