Whitney Biennial 2022:
Quiet as It’s Kept
Apr 6–Oct 16, 2022
Dyani White Hawk
62
Floor 5
Born 1976 in Madison, WI
Lives in Minneapolis, MN
Sičangu Lakota
Dyani White Hawk made this work by affixing loomed strips of thin glass bugle beads onto aluminum panels. Her art draws from the history of Lakota abstraction in beadwork, painting, and quill work, a traditional form of embroidery using porcupine quills. White Hawk also situates her practice in dialogue with that of abstract painters such as Barnett Newman and Jackson Pollock, who claimed Indigenous art as an influence. As she has stated: “Using glass beads references the history of cross-cultural trade relationships that have influenced the evolution of art forms over generations. The work is uniquely Lakota, tied to a lineage of artwork that speaks to connections between land and life. The title, Wopila | Lineage, expresses deep gratitude for the interwoven network of ancestral and living communities that make the work possible. I believe beauty is medicinal. The work, as an offering of beauty, is a gift of reciprocity. Simultaneously, the work presents critical dialogue that aims to shift collective narratives toward truthful reflections of the complex history of this land base.”
Wopila|Lineage, 2021
Dyani White Hawk, Wopila|Lineage, 2021. Acrylic, glass bugle beads, and synthetic sinew on aluminum panel, 8 × 14 ft. (2.4 × 4.3 m). Collection of the artist; courtesy the artist and Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN. Photograph by Ron Amstutz
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Dyani White Hawk, Wopila | Lineage
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Dyani White Hawk: My name is Dyani White Hawk. I am Sičangu Lakota through my mom, German and Welsh through my dad. I live in Shakopee Minnesota and I have a studio in Minneapolis.
I’m a painter and multimedia artist, so I do a lot of painting and beadwork, porcupine quillwork. And my practice pulls from the histories of Lakota abstraction and easel painting abstraction.
Beadwork is an important part of the artistic history of my tribe and has become an important part of my own artistic journey. The glass seed beads that have become synonymous with plains artwork were trade items that came through a relationship with non-native people. A lot of that work before the beads were available through trade was done in porcupine quillwork. You can see how exciting it must have been to all of a sudden have this beautiful new material to start incorporating into your artistic practices. And now, that has become so strongly integrated into the artistic history of native people that these European glass seed beads are now fairly synonymous with Native American artwork.
A lot of non-native people, and non-native painters were looking to the history of Native art. In beadwork, in porcupine quillwork, weaving, basketry you know and a lot of the most famous white male painters, who are lifted up as the founders of abstraction, were looking to Indigenous art. They were collecting that art because they recognized the strength and the agency and the beauty and the expertise of that work.
There’s a reason why they’re attracted to it, right, and a reason why they’re looking at it. And often even the tribes that the work is coming from is not spoken to, is not given the same kind of relevancy, importance, or honor as their non-native counterparts. So, my work really is meant to pull out and honor those intersections, to create opportunities for conversations where we can speak to the realities of our shared histories, and hopefully start creating narratives that are more honest and more truthful about our shared artistic history on this land base, so that hopefully our artistic narratives going forward reflect a greater truth.