“Diabetes Burden Belt, Blue RNA Microarray Analysis,” 2024, 4mm cube glass beads, string, brass cone jingles, 25 × 75 × 1 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
Erica Lord
Teaching Artist Cohort
,
2026
Erica Lord is an interdisciplinary artist who explores concepts and issues that exist within a contemporary Indigenous experience and how culture and identity are affected in a rapidly changing world. Lord draws on her experience of growing up between Alaska and Upper Michigan and on her mixed-race cultural identity drawn from her Athabaskan, Iñupiaq, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, and English descent. To address a multiple or mixed identity, Lord uses a variety of mediums to construct new, ambiguous, or challenging representations of race and culture.
Lord received her Bachelor of Arts from Carleton College and a Master of Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; the Musée du Quai Branly, Paris; the National Gallery of Canada; and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and the American Art Museum, Renwick Gallery. In 2024, Lord was an awardee of the Creative Capital Wild Futures Grant. Lord lives in Santa Fe, where she teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts and continues her art practice.
Selected works
“Multiple Myeloma Burden Belt, RNA Microarray (installation view),” 2024, 4mm cube glass beads, string, mannequin parka, qiviut musk ox wool cowl, beaded leather gloves, beaded headband, belt: 23.5 × 72 × 1 in.; installation dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“The Codes We Carry,” 2023, installation, installation dimensions variable. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Covid-19 Grayscale Tuppie, RNA Microarray Analysis, Variation #1,” 2025, 4mm cube glass beads, string, metal jingles, fabric, fringe, dog form, 18 × 26 × 1 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Covid-19 Red/Green Tuppie, DNA Microarray Analysis, Variation #1,” 2023, 4mm cube glass beads, string, tin jingles, fabric, fringe, 20 × 28 × 1 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Ovarian Cancer Tuppie, RNA Microarray Scanograph,” 2025, archival inkjet print (scanograph/scanned image of beadwork), 24 × 36 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
“Smallpox Tuppie, RNA Microarray Scanograph,” 2025, archival inkjet print (scanograph/scanned image of beadwork), 24 × 36 in. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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