The kapémni form, an abstract Lakota symbol broadly recognizable to Indigenous tribes of the Great Plains, consists of two mirrored triangles balanced in the center at their tips in an hourglass shape. The lower one represents the physical world, the upper one the sky and spiritual realm. The form was traditionally rendered in porcupine quillwork, beadwork and parfleche painting on garments and objects made by Native women.
“The kapémni really is a worldview based in Lakota philosophy that underscores our connectedness across all humanity, all plant life, all life period,” said Dyani White Hawk, a Minneapolis-based artist who is Sicangu Lakota, of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe.
She has integrated the kapémni motif in different media and at increasing scale and innovation over the last 15 years. “Utilizing it in my own work serves as a personal reminder over and over again to live by our values.”
White Hawk, 48, has recently received a surge of recognition in the art world for her multidisciplinary work that puts abstraction long used by the Lakota people in active conversation with elements of mid-20th century American painting including Abstract Expressionism, Color Field, Hard-Edge and Minimalism.
Awarded a MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” in 2023 and a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2024, White Hawk has high-profile commissions in progress at Kennedy International Airport and Portland International Airport in Oregon, and her work has been collected by dozens of major museums, including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Denver Art Museum and the Brooklyn Museum.
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