All photos by Gracelynn Growingthunder (Nakoda/Kiowa)
New York, NY — Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish) curated the Focus section of the 2023 Armory Show in New York. Currently, the director and chief curator of the Forge Project, based in Ancram, New York, Hopkins was senior curator of the 2019 and 2022 Toronto Biennial of Art and served on the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion of the 2019 Venice Biennale. Independent Curators International gave Hopkins and the American Indian Community House its 2022 Leo Award.
Hopkins selected solo and two-person exhibits to explore hidden histories and the malleability of history. “The artists in the Focus section use materials to manifest histories—whether sedimented or surfaced, place-based or familial, learned or reclaimed—and to conjure specific futures,” Hopkins wrote in her curatorial statement. She particularly highlights Indigenous artists, as well as Black, Latino, Asian, and Indigenous Australian artists, who are leaders in their fields but less known to the mainstream commercial art world.
“I feel like what artists bring are ways to shed light on what I call historical amnesia, and the work of Native artists, particularly in the US and other settler-colonial nations, often tells the true history of their lands,” Hopkins shared on the Armory website . “Sometimes they do that through painting a narrative but, more often, at least in this year’s Focus section, through the very materiality of the work.”
Some participating artists use materials in unexpected ways and as complements to the narrative of their subject. Textiles, and weaving in particular are highlighted. Some artists use ephemeral materials not meant to be preserved.
Focus Artists
Focus includes 17 Indigenous artists of the Americas, hailing from Canada, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, and the United States. They and their representing galleries include:
- Seba Calfuqueo (Mapuche), Galería Patricia Ready, Santiago
- Renée Condo (Mi’gmaw descent), Blouin Division, Montreal
- Sara Flores (Shipibo-Conibo), Clearing, New York, Brussels, Los Angeles
- Beau Dick (Kwakwaka’wakw, 1955–2017), Fazakas Gallery, Vancouver
- Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Peter Blum Gallery, New York
- Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw/Cherokee), Marc Straus, New York
- Patrick Dean Hubbell (Navajo), Nina Johnson, Miami, and Candice Madey, New York City
- G. Peter Jemison (Seneca), K Art, Buffalo
- Matthew Kirk (Navajo), Fierman, New York, and Halsey McKay Gallery, East Hampton, New York
- James Lavadour (Walla Walla) PDX Contemporary Art, Portland
- Eric-Paul Riege (Navajo), Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis
- Abel Rodríguez (Nonuya), Galeria Marília Razuk, São Paulo, and Instituto de Visión, Bogotá, New York
- Brus Rubio Churay (Murui/Bora), Sapar Contemporary, New York
- Couzyn van Heuvelen (Inuk), Fazakas Gallery, Vancouver
- Marie Watt (Seneca), Marc Straus, New York
- Nico Williams (Aamjiwnaang Ojibwe), Blouin Division, Montreal
- Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun (Cowichan/Syilx), Macaulay & Co. Fine Art, Vancouver
Links
- The Armory Show
- Discover Focus 2023
- Candice Hopkins discusses the 2023 Focus section, The Armory Show
- Forge Project
- 2022 Leo Award: Candice Hopkins and American Indian Community House (AICH), Independent Curators International
- Gracelynn Growingthunder (Nakoda/Kiowa)