Dyani White Hawk (Sičangu Lakota) creates intricate, exactingly-executed paintings that often combine the Lakota art of quill work with strong lines that echo blanket and moccasin patterns. She uses abstraction to bring American Indian tradition into a dynamic contemporary context. Her Tamarind lithographs are examples of her remarkable skills as an artist.
She says, “As a woman of Lakota and European ancestry my life experiences have been a continual negotiation of both Western and Indigenous educations, value systems, and worldviews. Through the amalgamation of symbols and motifs derivative of both Lakota and Western abstraction, my artwork examines, dissects, and patches back together pieces of each in a means to provide an honest representation of self and culture.”
White Hawk earned her MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2011) and BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts (2008). Her artwork has been collected by the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN); the Denver Art Museum (Denver, CO); the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (Washington, D.C.); the Tweed Museum of Art (Duluth, MN); the Akta Lakota Museum (Chamberlain, SD); Robert L. Penn Collection of Contemporary Northern Plains Indian Art of the University of South Dakota (Vermillion, SD); Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (Santa Fe, NM); Santa Fe Plains Indian Museum (Santa Fe, NM); Buffalo Bill Center of the West (Cody, WY); and numerous corporate and private collections.
Behind Closed Drawers: Dyani White Hawk
