Visual Dialogue

Lakota artist Sarah Rowe reimagines traditional symbology, winter counts, and the skewed imagery of history books as bold, shape-shifting landscapes. Now she is drawing with light. Her ten-foot Heyoka is her first work in neon and the first work supported by the Walker Youngbird Native Neon Residency in partnership with Lite Brite Neon Studio.

A special behind-the-scenes glimpse into Grace Rosario Perkins’s monumental sculpture for Circles, Spokes, Zigzags, Rivers at the Whitney. Built with care, history, and the hands of family and friends, this sculpture is sourced with found objects from sites across Arizona and New Mexico that have been impacted by addiction and environmental harm.

Names shape legacy. Hayden Haynes, Seneca artist and the inaugural recipient of the Núhi Grant, shares the cultural role of Name Givers in his community and how their wisdom and guidance inspired his latest work. We’re invited into the early moments of his carving practice: cleaning antler, preparing the material, and grounding the work in meaning.

At the first annual Ohi:yo’ Art Market, hosted by the Seneca-Iroquois National Museum, Hayden Haynes shares his reflections on why supporting Native artists, and Native-led art markets like Ohi:yo’, is essential to sustaining Indigenous art and sovereignty.

Akwesasne Mohawk artist Natasha Smoke Santiago has spent the past two decades dedicated to her Haudenosaunee pottery practice. Storytellers House shares the story behind her award-winning pottery ‘Matrilineal’, showing how each artwork holds generations of knowledge, from the land to the table.