Exhibition Guide | We've Been Gathering Places: 2024 IAIA MFA Exhibition

There are references to physical and spiritual places in this exhibition–the Four Directions, a hogan, iconic earthworks, specific landforms. But the students are also identifying their cohort and themselves as gathering places–for ideas, experiences and histories that flow out into discrete material vessels and sweeping installations.

-Mario Caro, Director of MFA in Studio Arts

Institute of American Indian Arts

"The buffalo are our relatives. We lived with them for millennia. We made a covenant with them and because of their sacrifice for our survival, we promised to honor them in ceremony, song, and prayer. They were our shelter, food, clothing, and spiritual conduit," says BigEagle-Kequahtoohway. "They were almost decimated in the 1800s due to the impacts of colonization; we survived, but were traumatized by their removal from this continent. We mourned their loss—our familial connection disrupted and severed. We never had the convenience of time to cry because our ancestors were promptly imprisoned in the residential institutions. We wept in silence, but we remained hopeful that the buffalo would return."

"Modernist land art works by the likes of Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer have come under increasing scrutiny by contemporary Native American artists who view these heralded art-historical works as unwanted physical impositions on stolen land," says Mekko Harjo. "Working through the visual language of atmospheric ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response) this work presents a handful of canonical land art pieces as digital tourist simulations, offering viewers and listeners cheap and easy access to these often prohibitively expensive and physically exclusive curated landscapes."