August 5 - September 25, 2022, Wednesday - Sunday, 12pm - 5pm
In the Realm of Miracles brings together two Tulsa Artist Fellows, Kite and Natani Notah. The works of both indigenous artists embrace and expand beyond the link of cultural heritage. Kite and Notah stretch the understanding of mixed media while exploring the intersections of the human and the natural worlds. Each of their artworks can be viewed through a lens of duality or a juxtaposition of thought and theory. What answers about life can be found by investigating our connection to our universe and our shared or contrasting philosophies?
Kite Artist Bio:
Kite aka Suzanne Kite is an Oglala Lakota performance artist, visual artist, and composer raised in Southern California, with an MFA from Bard College’s Milton Avery Graduate School, and is a PhD candidate at Concordia University, Research Assistant for the Initiative for Indigenous Futures, and a 2019 Trudeau Scholar. Her research is concerned with contemporary Lakota ontologies through research-creation, computational media, and performance practice. Recently, Kite has been developing a body interface for movement performances, carbon fiber sculptures, immersive video & sound installations. Currently, she is a 2019 Pierre Elliott Trudeau Foundation Scholar and 2020-2021 Tulsa Artist Fellow.
In this exhibition, Kite’s body of artwork focuses on settlers’ desire for Indigeneity through disturbed relationships to hunting nonhumans. How are relationships to the land formed without understandings of ancient cosmologyscapes? What is the connection between sickness of the land and sickness of the soul? Kite’s found sculpture, Iyátakunipi kte šni (they will come to nothing), a poorly made taxidermy reveals the mundane horror of human relationships to deer. Ȟuŋwíŋ áyapi is a hide sculpture with beaded forms of rot and decay. Finally, Deerfucker is a video created with various machine learning techniques examining text and images where settler desire for deer veers into horror.
Thank you to Sam Lee Regan.
Natani Notah Artist Bio:
Natani Notah is an interdisciplinary artist. She is a proud member of the Navajo Nation and her current art practice explores contemporary Native American identity through the lens of Diné womanhood. Notah has exhibited her work at institutions, such as apexart, New York City; NXTHVN, New Haven; Tucson Desert Art Museum, Tucson; Gas Gallery, Los Angeles; The Holland Project, Reno; Mana Contemporary, Chicago; Axis Gallery, Sacramento; SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, and elsewhere. Notah has received awards from Art Matters, International Sculpture Center, and the San Francisco Foundation. Her work has been featured in Art in America, Hyperallergic, Forbes, and Sculpture Magazine and she has had artist residencies at the Vermont Studio Center, Grounds for Sculpture, Headlands Center for the Arts, This Will Take Time, Oakland, and Kala Art Institute. Notah holds a BFA with a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University and an MFA from Stanford University.
Natani Notah’s new works explore connections between bodies, objects, and landforms. Central to the work is the concept of harmony and important questions surrounding contemporary existence and legality. How do we find beauty or balance in a chaotic and often violent world? What kinds of attacks are being wagered and how do we survive them? Notah’s series of mixed media drawings collage fragments together to provide space for alternative bodies and thoughts to exist simultaneously. Familiar and unfamiliar figures float, reach, and walk toward someone or something else. In a similar vein, her sculptures reference abstract limbs that are both human and nonhuman. Each piece is adorned with brightly beaded patches that look like freckles and tumors, while tufts of artificial fur allude to mammals or new life forms. In all, Notah’s practice highlights where history, politics, land, and human rights converge.
Watch Natani Notah’s Artist Talk here
This project is sponsored by Robin Ballenger and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship
Watch the virtual tour of the exhibition below
Join us for the following exhibition programming!
Opening Reception:
Friday, August 5, 2022 | 6:00-9:00 pm
Located at 108|Contemporary
“In the Realm of Miracles” Performance with Kite:
Thursday, August 25, 2022 | 5:30 pm
Located at TAF Flagship (112 N Boston Ave)
Artist Talk with Kite:
Thursday, September 8, 2022 | 5:30 pm
Located at 108|Contemporary
Artist Talk with Natani Notah:
Thursday, September 15, 2022 | 5:30 pm
Located at 108|Contemporary