Honoring Indigeneity in the 21st Century with Cannupa Hanska

Story in the Public Square

Indigenous artists often straddle a space created by white anthropologists between art and craft. Cannupa Hanska Luger grapples with that dichotomy. Creating art from tradition that, in its time, was purely practical. And seeing his own contemporary activism viewed as art when it was, in fact, protest.

Luger is a multidisciplinary artist and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold—Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. Through installations and social collaboration, Luger communicates stories about 21st-century indigeneity with critical cultural analysis and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages. He lectures and produces large-scale projects around the globe and his works are in many public collections. Luger is a 2022 Guggenheim fellow, recipient of the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft and was named a Grist 50 Fixer for 2021, a list which includes emerging leaders in climate, sustainability, and equity who are creating change across the nation. He is a 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, the recipient the 2020 A Blade Of Grass Artist Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art and the recipient of the Center For Crafts inaugural Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship for 2020. He is the recipient of a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grants, a 2019 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Honoree and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize.

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