Cannupa Hanska Luger, Painting with Silk

Episode No. 695 features artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and curator Ken Myers.

The Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University is presenting "Cannupa Hanska Luger: Speechless," an examination of the complications of colonial histories from an Indigenous perspective. "Speechless" particularly focuses on how narratives, myths, and histories are constructed through the concept of the cargo cult, which developed as a result of Western military campaigns that delivered supplies to foreign lands inhabited by Indigenous peoples. These cults formed around the provisions that were delivered by the imperial forces (such as radios), the very groups that were colonizing Indigenous lands. The exhibition was curated by Apsara DiQuinzio and remains on view through July 6.

Concurrently, Luger's work may be seen in the 16th Sharjah Biennial, "Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice" at the Moody Center, Rice University, and in "Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always" at the Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University.

Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. His work, across a wide range of media, extends cultural awareness and enables action. His work has been presented in solo or two-person shows by the Public Art Fund, New York; the University of Michigan Museum of Art; the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Mass., and more.

Works discussed on the program include:

• A single-channel version of Luger's Future Ancestral Technologies: New Myth, 2021;
• Luger's extended Mirror Shield project; and
• Luger's Uŋziwoslal Wašičuta installation series, which celebrates the Transportable Intergenerational Protection Infrastructure (TIPI), 2021-.

Myers is the curator of "Painted with Silk: The Art of Early American Embroidery" at the Detroit Institute of Arts. "Painted with Silk" looks at how US schoolgirl embroideries made from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries helped build and extend ideas around nation, gender, class, and religion. It also includes contemporary embroideries by Elaine Reichek that repurpose the form of earlier embroideries and investigate their constructions of gender, class, and race. The exhibition is on view through June 15.

Instagram: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Tyler Green.