2023 MacArthur Genius Sičangu Lakota Dyani WhiteHawk

Chinuk Wawa filmmaker gets MacArthur “genius grant”!

LAST YEAR: Sky Hopinka (above) 2022 Genius Grant

The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation announced the 2023 class of fellows, often known as recipients of the “genius grant,” TODAY.

The 20 fellows will each receive a grant of $800,000 over five years to spend however they want, though they are selected for the exceptional work they’ve already done, their ability to do more and their ability to leverage and be enabled by the fellowship itself, said Marlies Carruth, who directs the MacArthur Fellows program.

This YEAR: (just announced!!)

Dyani White Hawk, 46, Shakopee, Minneapolis, a multidisciplinary artist whose paintings, embroidered canvases, photographs and videos uplift and draw connections between Indigenous art practices and aesthetics and contemporary and modern art.

Her website: https://www.dyaniwhitehawk.com/news/

TOP PHOTO: Dyani’s art

I have known her mom Sandy White Hawk (Rosebud) for MANY MANY YEARS – she’s an adoptee like me. Right now she’s in Minnesota and still helping reunite adoptees with their tribes… – LARA/TRACE

DYANI’S Artist Statement:

As a woman of Sičangu Lakota and European American ancestry, I was raised within Native and urban American communities. I strive to create honest, inclusive works that draw from the breadth of my life experiences, Native and non-Native, urban, academic, and cultural education systems. This allows me to start from center, deepening my own understanding of the intricacies of self and culture, correlations between personal and national history, and Indigenous and mainstream art histories.

My painting and sculptural works reflect these cross-cultural experiences through the combination of influences from modern abstract painting and abstract Lakota art forms. Some are executed strictly in paint on canvas while others incorporate materials such as beads, porcupine quillwork, and buckskin, weaving aesthetics and concepts from multiple yet intertwined histories.

Recent work in performance, video, and photography focusing on issues of Indigenous language, women’s rights, and the necessity of nurturing cross-cultural relationships, has further developed the driving force of my practice; to encourage conversations that challenge the lack of representation of Native arts, people and voices in our national consciousness while highlighting the truth and necessity of equality and intersectionality.

BELOW: Seeing. (2011). Oil on Canvas. 60 x 60 in.