Peter Blum Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new works by Nicholas Galanin entitled, The persistence of Land claims in a climate of change. This is the artist’s third solo exhibition with the gallery. There is an opening reception on November 8, 2024, from 6–8pm, and the exhibition runs through January 18, 2025, at 176 Grand Street, New York, NY.
Multidisciplinary artist Nicholas Galanin works at the intersection of conceptual and material practice, rooted in his Lingít and Unangax̂ background and his relationship to Land. Working in diverse media, he celebrates Indigenous cultural continuum, refuses the legitimacy of colonization and occupation, and fights cultural erasure. In the exhibition, The persistence of Land claims in a climate of change, Galanin reflects on the distance between peace and justice by centering the enduring Indigenous protection of Land in the face of expansive extraction. He relates: “We can sharpen our vision of the present with cultural knowledge and memory. These works embody cultural memory and practice, reflecting persistence, sacrifice, violence, refusal, endurance, and resistance.” The exhibition includes photography, monotypes, large and small sculptural works in bronze, ceramic, and wood, and an interactive installation.
The exhibition’s titular work is a bronze fish club cast from a yellow cedar club carved by Galanin. It is an embodiment of cultural memory and practice, able to withstand tests of time even as fish populations are threatened by climate collapse. The photographic self-portrait, Artist carrying the weight of imitation (after Christ carrying the cross), positions counterfeit totems as instruments of punishment. The image signifies the legacy of forced religious conversions and the capitalization and appropriation of culture as intergenerational burdens carried by Indigenous people. The Reenactment (Inversion) photographs depict a pile of wood chopped from a counterfeit totem pole, burning on a beach near the artist’s home. They create an inversion of the destruction by colonizers and missionaries of Indigenous totem poles along the coast of Alaska. The interactive installation Pause for Applause, displays a Land acknowledgement text on two teleprompters placed on either side of a mirror. Participants are invited to read the text silently or aloud to their reflection in the mirror; it is an opportunity to consider personal relationships to Land and who Land acknowledgments serve.
In the work, There is no equivalent translation, Galanin shifts the objective of Land surveying instruments and markers, placing a rock on a surveyor's tripod next to a pile of marking flags made of polar bear fur. It insists that Land is our wayfinder and the source of sustenance. Shattering ram (keep your peace) is a broken ceramic likeness of a police battering ram with the shattered surface glazed with deep blue and gold luster giving way to a white porcelain interior. The work focuses on the fragility of systems reliant on oppression and disenfranchisement through systemic racism and capitalist hierarchy. In Eye Opener, a porcelain pry bar resting on a velvet cushion is incapable of separating objects or breaking locks; delicate and decorative, it is an indictment of performative resistance. Through his layered work, Galanin centers Indigenous knowledge and responsibility to Land, inviting consideration of our collective interdependence and connection.
Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979) lives and works with his partner Merritt Johnson and their children in Sheet’ka (Sitka), Alaska. He earned a BFA at London Guildhall University (2003), an MFA at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand (2007), and apprenticed with master carvers and jewelers. Solo institutional exhibitions include Baltimore Museum of Art (2024-25); SITE Santa Fe (2023); and New York Public Art Fund (2023). Galanin will participate in Public Art Abu Dhabi (2024-25) and the Boston Triennial (2025), he is currently participating in the Toronto Biennial (2024), and he participated in the Liverpool Biennial (2023); Desert X, Palm Springs (2021); the Biennale of Sydney (2020); and the Whitney Biennial (2019). Permanent collections include The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Art Institute of Chicago; The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Brooklyn Museum; Detroit Institute of Fine Arts. He is a Guggenheim Fellow (2024), a Soros Art Fellow (2020), and an American Academy of Arts and Letters award recipient (2020).