Guards at art museums keep quiet watch over visitors, avoid eye contact and sometimes follow people. The atmosphere isn’t always welcoming.
Sičáŋǧu Lakota artist Dyani White Hawk wants to change that.
At her Walker Art Center exhibition, the guards are friendlier. Their standard shirts already have “Hello” printed on them. They now can wear shirts and enamel pins with the text: “háu/háŋ mitákuyepi hello my relatives.”
“I want every person that walks into this space to feel like we’re happy to see you, even if it’s just a smile and a nod,” White Hawk said.
Most of all, she wants to make the space beautiful.
“If it feels beautiful for the Native community, it will inevitably feel beautiful,” she said.
“Love Language” celebrates 15 years of White Hawk and her community on their home turf. The exhibition was co-curated with the Remai Modern in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, where it will be on display in April.
The partnership is part of “a desire to locate her practice firmly within the Oceti Sakowin homelands that traverse the imposed Canada-U.S. border,” Remai Modern Adjunct Curator Tarah Hogue said.
The show includes nearly 100 artworks, from White Hawk’s smaller solo pieces to her monumental beadworks created with community, recent glass mosaic works fabricated in Germany and collaborative videos.
