Intersections

Exhibition Website

Oct 16 2018 - Aug 19 2019

Intersections, an exhibition of contemporary Native art from Minnesota-based artists, features works primarily from the Tweed Museum collection. The exhibition highlights significant artists, beginning with George Morrison and Patrick DesJarlait, who were at the forefront of the contemporary Native art movement and have influenced artists since then. It is a continuation of the Tweed Museum’s focus on the development of Native arts in our region.

Intersections shows how these particular artists have informed each other and how they intersect in an aesthetic field with a mutually recognized canon as to artistic style,medium, and subject matter. While each artist has an individual artistic voice, combined they amplify a strong, distinct, and unifying voice, which has influenced the contemporary national and international art world. The artists express compelling visual narratives, and each tell a culturally powerful story, sometimes based on oral tradition. They advocate for socio-political justice by requiring audiences to think more about Native people’s place in American history and current society.

Many of the artworks merge imagery derived from pop culture references, commenting on stereotypes, cultural appropriation, racism, historical trauma, and identity, while other artists offer a critique of negative institutional and corporate practices, such as the exploitation of the environment, imperialism, colonization, and the effects of Federal policies aimed at assimilation. Despite this darkness, many of the artists use humor, which illustrates a remarkable resilience, and some artists convey peacefulness through their work as a way to nurture healing. Intersections is about the significance of storytelling and the belief that all lives are interconnected. These artists encourage us to learn more about Native peoples’ philosophies, as well as their collective experiences past and present. Now is a remarkably creative era of contemporary art in Minnesota, and one that will exert its influence well into the future.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website

  • Various Media
  • Indigenous
  • Contemporary
  • Americas
  • George Morrison
  • Jim Denomie
  • Patrick DesJarlait
  • Carl Gawboy
  • Dyani White Hawk
  • Andrea Carlson
  • Jonathan Thunder
  • and others

Exhibition Venues & Dates