2022 Catalogue Archive

Cannupa Hanska Luger was born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, Austrian, and Norwegian descent. His work often merges traditional, authentic Native American imagery with clichés, caricatures, and oversimplified images of indigenous peoples. Old Dominion mashes up two iconic, if not cliché, references: the buffalo skull and the American stars and stripes. Though both may be symbols of America in varying contexts, one is the symbol of the colonizer and one has a genuine connection to Native American culture and the landscape. Luger’s work is included in the collections of many museums, among them the North America Native Museum, Zürich; the Denver Art Museum; the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe; the Luciano Benetton Collection: Imago Mundi, Treviso; and the Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven.