On View
Mįhą́pmąk
Mįhą́pmąk
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Aug 29, 2022
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Jan 28, 2023
“Mįhą́pmąk” is a solo exhibition of 2020 Craft Research Fund Artist Fellow Cannupa Hanska Luger’s ongoing work to recover and re-establish his ancestral Mandan clay traditions. The Mandan people of what is now known as North Dakota are the original inhabitants of the clay-rich lands that stretch over the Missouri River basin and across the plains. Their centuries-old clay traditions and technologies range from functional vessels to earth-built homes. Colonialism decimated Mandan populations in the 18th century and Luger’s grant-funded artistic research is an urgent response to recover this critical indigenous knowledge.
The exhibition includes ceramics, research ephemera, and documentation from the past two years of his ongoing investigation, which was conducted in museum collections, in the cut banks and clay veins of the Fort Berthold Reservation, with community elders, and through the materiality of the clay itself, asserting the role of the artist-researcher in rebuilding and creating knowledge. The exhibition’s title, “Mįhą́pmąk,” translates from Mandan language to “nowadays (in modern times)” and “here we are.” This word is a declaration of presence and resilience.
Considering his research process, the artist notes: “After digging, processing, testing, firing, observing, destroying, pulverizing, and making with clay over two years, I have only begun to understand the complex ancestral technologies of my Mandan ancestors. Yet, a memory has been woken in my muscles — I am at the beginning — honoring the knowledge of before, the experimentation of the present, and practicing a way forward for future generations of my people. My hope is that [this research] provides reflection to possible experiences for Indigenous people of my heritage to reacquaint themselves with clay.” Luger’s research demonstrates a living continuum of Indigenous clay experience by communing with ancestral knowledge and integrating it with contemporary technologies and practices that are geared toward the future.
Cannupa Hanska Luger is the recipient of the Center for Craft’s 2020 Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship. Each year this substantial mid-career grant is awarded to two artists to support research projects that advance, expand, and support the creation of new research and knowledge through craft practice.
This exhibition was developed as part of the 2023 Center for Craft Curatorial Fellowship. This program was created in 2017 to provide emerging curators with a platform to explore and test new ideas about craft. Each curator receives an honorarium, access to professional development tools, mentoring, and the opportunity to work closely with the other Curatorial Fellows and Center for Craft staff to produce their exhibition, develop educational materials, design an exhibition catalog, and deliver a curatorial talk.
Meet the artists
Faye Junaluska
Cherokee, NC
Lucille Lossiah
Ramon Lose
Cullowhee, NC
ᏯᏗ ᎺᏂ Betty Maney
Cherokee, NC
ᏗᎳᏂ Dylan Morgan
Cherokee, NC
ᎺᎵ ᏔᎻᏏᏂ Mary W. Thompson
ᏎᎳᏂ ᏔᎻᏏᏂ Sarah Thompson
Patricia Welch
Meet the artists
about the artists
Photo credit: Jamie Hopper
Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist and an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota). Through monumental installations and social collaboration, Luger activates speculative fiction and communicates stories about 21st Century Indigeneity, combining critical cultural analysis with dedication 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 Craft’s inaugural Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship for 2020. He is the recipient of a 2019 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant, a 2019 Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Honoree, and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize. Luger has exhibited internationally including venues such as the Gardiner Museum, Kunsthal KAdE, Washington Project for the Arts, Art Mûr, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, among others. Luger holds a BFA in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts.
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