Grounded by Our Roots

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Included with any admission.
Floor 1, Northwest Coast Hall, Contemporary Art Gallery

Mixed media painting depicting two figures dancing under fireworks.
Midnight at the Fireworks Stand by Alison Bremner Naxhshagheit
Photography by Alvaro Keding/© AMNH
View extraordinary works by up-and-coming Indigenous artists who draw inspiration from their cultural traditions. 

Grounded by Our Roots features 13 pieces—including paintings, prints, clothing, and sculptures—that showcase contemporary Indigenous art inspired by rich visual arts traditions of the Northwest Coast.  

The exhibition is produced with guest curator Aliya Boubard, the curator of the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art in Vancouver, who is Anishinaabe and a member of Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba.

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Included with any admission.

A mannequin wearing a striped vest and a patterned, fringed skirt. Held by Generations by Hawilkwalał Rebecca Baker-Grenier 
Photography by Alvaro Keding/© AMNH
A painting with a stylized face at the center surrounded by another face and four stylized birds. Shines like Gold by SGidGang.Xaal Shoshannah Greene
Photography by Alvaro Keding/© AMNH

The artists featured in the gallery are:

  • Hawilkwalał Rebecca Baker-Grenier (Kwakiuł, Musgamagw Dzawada’enuxw, Skwxwú7mesh), a fashion designer who debuted her first collection at New York Fashion Week in 2022 and sees “fashion as a living practice that is rooted in our art form, laws, and worldview” 
  • Alison Bremner Naxhshagheit (Tlingit), who works in woodcarving, painting, and digital collage, among other media, “exploring the present-day Tlingit experience, each concept ultimately dictating the medium”
  • SGidGang.Xaal Shoshannah Greene (Haida), who studied hand-drawn animation before switching to classical and contemporary Haida formline and “love(s) to explore and play between the worlds of classical formline and contemporary mediums”
  • Nash’mene’ta’naht Atheana Picha (Kwantlen First Nation), whose work is “focused on learning traditional Coast Salish design language and studying Northwest Coast artwork with the introduction of different material practices”
  • Eliot White-Hill, Kwulasultun (Snuneymuxw First Nation), an interdisciplinary artist who aims to “share our art and our teachings, and ensure that future generations will have that knowledge accessible to them”

The exhibition will be on view in the Contemporary Art Gallery, a rotating exhibition gallery in the Museum’s Northwest Coast Hall, and is included with all admission.