Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing
Mar 20–Aug 11, 2024
Cannupa Hanska Luger (he/him)
37
Floor 5
Born 1979 in Fort Yates, ND, on the Standing Rock Reservation
Lives in Glorieta, NM
Cannupa Hanska Luger proposes: “This installation is not inverted . . . our current world is upside down.” For the artist, upending our grounding in time and space makes way for imagined futures free of colonialism and capitalism, where broader Indigenous knowledge can thrive. The work here, Uŋziwoslal Wašičuta (a Lakota phrase meaning “the fat-taker’s world is upside down”), celebrates Native technologies by using the shape of a tipi—a word that the artist has also turned into an acronym, standing for Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure (TIPI). Luger looks at the complex structure as an example of the innovations created by his ancestors of the Northern Plains tribes. Luger’s materials, such as deadstock fabric, found objects, and clay, reflect the artist’s commitment to sustainability and reuse.
Uŋziwoslal Wašičuta (from the series Future Ancestral Technologies), 2021–
Installation view of Whitney Biennial 2024: Even Better Than the Real Thing (Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, March 20- August 11, 2024). From left to right: Maja Ruznic, The Past Awaiting the Future/Arrival of Drummers, 2023; Dora Budor, Dominoes, 2023; Cannupa Hanska Luger, Uŋziwoslal Wašičuta (from the series Future Ancestral Technologies), 2021.Photograph by Ron Amstutz