Focus Highlights Indigenous Artists at the 2023 Armory Show
FAAZINE
September 9, 2023
New York, NY — Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish) curated the Focus section of the 2023 Armory Show in New York. Currently, the director and chief curator of the Forge Project, based in Ancram, New York, Hopkins was senior curator of the 2019 and 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art and served on the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion of the 2019 Venice Biennale. Independent Curators International gave Hopkins and the American Indian Community House its 2022 Leo Award.
Hopkins selected solo and two-person exhibits to explore hidden histories and the malleability of history. “The artists in the Focus section use materials to manifest histories—whether sedimented or surfaced, place-based or familial, learned or reclaimed—and to conjure specific futures,” Hopkins wrote in her curatorial statement. She particularly highlights Indigenous artists, as well as Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous Australian artists, who are leaders in their fields but less known to the mainstream commercial art world.
“I feel like what artists bring are ways to shed light on what I call historical amnesia, and the work of Native artists, particularly in the US and other settler-colonial nations, often tells the true history of their lands,” Hopkins shared on the Armory website . “Sometimes they do that through painting a narrative but, more often, at least in this year’s Focus section, through the very materiality of the work.”
Some participating artists use materials in unexpected ways and as complements to the narrative of their subject. Textiles, and weaving in particular are highlighted. Some artists use ephemeral materials not meant to be preserved.
Focus includes 17 Indigenous artists of the Americas, hailing from Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. They and their representing galleries include:
G. Peter Jemison (Seneca) and his artwork. Photo: Gracelynn Growingthunder (Nakoda/Kiowa).
Seba Calfuqueo (Mapuche), Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago
Renée Condo (Mi’gmaw descent), Blouin Division, Montreal
Sara Flores (Shipibo-Conibo), Clearing, New York, Brussels, Los Angeles
Beau Dick (Kwakwaka’wakw, 1955–2017), Fazakas Gallery, Vancouver
Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Peter Blum Gallery, New York
Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee), Marc Straus, New York
Patrick Dean Hubbell (Navajo), Nina Johnson, Miami, and Candice Madey, New York City
G. Peter Jemison (Seneca), K Art, Buffalo
Matthew Kirk (Navajo), Fierman, New York, and Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, New York
James Lavadour (Walla Walla) PDX Contemporary Art, Portland
Eric-Paul Riege (Navajo), Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis
Abel Rodríguez (Nonuya), Galeria Marília Razuk, São Paulo, and Instituto de Visión, Bogotá, New York
Brus Rubio Churay (Murui/Bora), Sapar Contemporary, New York
Couzyn van Heuvelen (Inuk), Fazakas Gallery, Vancouver
Marie Watt (Seneca), Marc Straus, New York
Nico Williams (Aamjiwnaang Ojibwe), Blouin Division, Montreal
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (Cowichan/Syilx), Macaulay & Co. Fine Art, Vancouver