College of Liberal Arts & Social Sciences > Centers & Institutes > DePaul Humanities Center > Events > And Then...? Native Art > Native Art Participants

Native Art Participants

 

Andrea Carlson

ANDREA CARLSON is a visual artist currently living in Chicago. Through painting and drawing, Carlson investigates cultural narratives and questions institutional authority over objects based on the presumed merit of possession and display. Her Anishinaabe (Ojibwe), French, and Scandinavian heritage provides a rich foundation for her examination of cultural consumption, history, identity, and the intrinsic power of storytelling. Her unique way of bringing to light a sense of location in her work helps Carlson to situate her audience in terms of history and place. Her current research activities include Indigenous Futurism and assimilation metaphors in film. Her work has been acquired by institutions such as 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. In 2020, she helped form the Center for Native Futures, the only Native art center in Chicago. In January 2022 she was one of six Chicago area artists honored with the prestigious United States Artists Fellowship, for “artistic vision and commitment to community.”

 

Julie Buffalohead

JULIE BUFFALOHEAD is a Minnesota-based artist and a member of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma. Her artwork portrays emotional and subversive American Indian experiences, often analyzing the commercialization of indigenous cultures. Buffalohead creates visual narratives with animal characters who have personhood, agency, and individuality. The rabbits and coyotes that feature prominently in Buffalohead’s work often play the part of the trickster in Native storytelling. As we enter her worlds, she coaxes us to discover additional layers of meaning—social, historical, political, and personal—using metaphor, wisdom, and wit. Buffalohead is a recipient of numerous fellowships and grants, including the Guggenheim Fine Arts Fellowship, the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant, and the McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Visual Arts. Additionally, she has had solo exhibitions at the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, the Minnesota Museum of American Art in St. Paul, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York City, and the Bockley Gallery.

 

Frank Buffalo Gyde

FRANK BUFFALO HYDE is a Santa Fe artist who juxtaposes 21st-century pop culture signifiers with symbols and themes from his Native heritage. A member of the Onondaga Nation, he grew up with his mother on a New York reservation and began exhibiting his work as a hobby at the age of 18. Hyde ultimately enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Arts, where he decided to turn his passion into a career. In particular, Hyde seeks to dismantle stereotypes of Native culture within his work. He takes imagery from pop culture, politics, films, television shows, etc., and overlaps the references to replicate what he refers to as “the collective unconsciousness of the 21st century.”  Hyde overtly defies the aesthetics of what Native art “should” look like, including focusing on subjects such as selfie-sticks, iPhones, cheerleaders, and plates of buffalo wings in his paintings. Hyde’s work has been exhibited internationally, and he was the artist-in-residence at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe. Additionally, his work has been featured everywhere from the Smithsonian to a variety of other museums that focus on Native/tribal artwork. In 2021, Artst named Hyde one of the top ten most important Native artists in history working from North American traditions.


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