Minneapolis artist Dyani White Hawk was recently awarded a MacArthur Fellowship, sometimes referred to as the “genius grant.”
White Hawk grew up in Madison, Wis., and now lives in Minneapolis. She is known internationally for her bold, colorful beadwork — a practice she learned from her community as a teen — and abstract painting.
Her art draws on her Lakota heritage and challenges many tropes and myths championed by Western art history.
MPR News senior arts reporter Alex V. Cipolle recently sat down with White Hawk in her busy studio in the Casket Arts building in northeast Minneapolis. It was filled with her team of friends and family as they prepared for a November exhibition in Los Angeles. White Hawk will also have her first career survey at the Walker Art Center in 2025.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How does it feel to be labeled a genius?
White Hawk: [Laughs] That part of it is strange. The foundation itself asserts that that’s not the label that they use, because I think they see that as a somewhat narrow definition of the value or worth of what intelligence looks like in different people. But it’s like this colloquial thing that people have taken on, and so we’ve had a lot of good jokes with my family, friends and loved ones about that label.
That particular word itself is not something that I’m hanging on to too tightly; I’m more grateful for the apparent values that drive the work of the MacArthur Foundation — that’s what I see as reflected by the cohort of peoples that are in the 2023 group. It’s a phenomenal group of people doing really important, really passionate, values-based work.
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