Sonya Kelliher-Combs: TITIQ/MARK

Sonya Kelliher-Combs: TITIQ/MARK highlights nearly two decades of the artist’s explorations of history, cultural continuity, self-determination, and land use through her inventive approaches to artmaking. An Iñupiaq and Koyukon artist based in Anchorage, Alaska, Kelliher-Combs (b. 1969) makes paintings, sculptures, and installations that are deeply informed by generational knowledge. The Iñupiaq word “TITIQ,” which translates to "MARK" in English, carries multiple meanings, including the visible and invisible marks of colonialism, as well as the physical mark-making essential to Kelliher-Combs’s practice. The exhibition, which is the artist’s first solo museum show in New York, foregrounds her use of repetition and seriality and includes examples from ongoing bodies of work, such as Curls, Remnants, Idiot Strings, and Secrets.  

Kelliher-Combs uses a wide range of artistic mediums, including marine mammal gut, paint, hair, fabric, animal hide, thread, and her own innovations with acrylic polymer. The exhibition will highlight the breadth of these experimentations while grounding her practice in traditional methods of production, like gut processing and sewing. As the first mid-career survey of an Indigenous artist at the Whitney, TITIQ/MARK expands the Museum’s commitment to presenting a fuller picture of contemporary American art and is an unprecedented opportunity to share the material culture of the Bering Strait region with our audiences, underscoring its ongoing importance in Indigenous communities today.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs: TITIQ/MARK is co-organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Anchorage Museum. The exhibition is co-curated by Jennie Goldstein, Marion Boulton “Kippy” Stroud Curator of the Collection, Whitney Museum of American Art, and Julie Decker, Director/CEO, Anchorage Museum, with Rose Pallone, Curatorial Assistant, Whitney Museum of American Art.

Major support for Sonya Kelliher-Combs: TITIQ/MARK is provided by the Adam D. Weinberg Artists First Fund, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and the Whitney’s National Committee.

Significant support is provided by the Keith Haring Foundation Exhibition Fund, and Sueyun and Gene Locks.

Generous support is provided by the Kapadia Equity Fund.

Curatorial research and travel for this exhibition were funded by an endowment established by Rosina Lee Yue and Bert A. Lies, Jr., MD.