Interview

Demian DinéYazhi´ (born 1983) is an Indigenous Diné transdisciplinary artist born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Growing up in the colonized border town of Gallup, New Mexico, the evolution of DinéYaz´’s work has been influenced by their ancestral ties to traditional Diné culture, ceremony, matrilineal upbringing, the sacredness of land, and the importance of intergenerational knowledge.

Through research, mining community archives, and social collaboration, DinéYazhi´ highlights the intersections of Radical Indigenous Queer Feminist identity and political ideology while challenging the white noise of contemporary art.

They have recently exhibited at Portland Biennial (2019), Honolulu Biennial (2019), Whitney Museum of American Art (2018), Henry Art Gallery (2018), Pioneer Works (2018), CANADA, NY (2017); and Cooley Art Gallery (2017). DinéYazhi´ is the founder of the Indigenous artist/activist initiative, R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment. They are the recipient of the Henry Art Museum’s Brink Award (2017), Hallie Ford Fellow in the Visual Arts (2018), and Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellow (2019). Follow on Instagram @heterogeneoushomosexual

I received my B.A., magna cum laude from Harvard University in 1980 in Visual and Environmental Studies and an M.A. from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in 1983.  I am a recipient of grants from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, The New York Foundation for the Arts and The National Endowment for the Arts, Individual Artist’s Fellowship program.

I have been a resident at The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, The Millay Colony , The Cité Internationale des Artes in Paris, The Golden Foundation and The Hermitage Artists Retreat in Florida.

My paintings and drawings have been exhibited nationally and internationally for over twenty years, including solo shows in in Houston, Boston, Milan, Leipzig and San Francisco. In 2014 a five-year survey of my work was on exhibit at Colgate University. My most recent one-person show, Love, American Style, was in 2018 at Pierogi Gallery in the Lower East Side of New York.

In addition to individual work I also make collaborative drawings with my husband, James Esber. This work, exhibited under the fairly transparent pseudonym “J. Fiber” has been included in numerous group shows in the United States.

I have lived and worked in Williamsburg, Brooklyn since 1986.

The books mentioned in the interview is by Dani Shapiro, Inheritance: A Memoir of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love.

Artist Wendy Red Star works across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society. Raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, Red Star’s work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance. An avid researcher of archives and historical narratives, Red Star seeks to incorporate and recast her research, offering new and unexpected perspectives in work that is at once inquisitive, witty and unsettling. Intergenerational collaborative work is integral to her practice, along with creating a forum for the expression of Native women’s voices in contemporary art.

Red Star has exhibited in the United States and abroad at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fondation Cartier pour l’ Art Contemporain, Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Portland Art Museum, Hood Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others. She served a visiting lecturer at institutions including Yale University, the Figge Art Museum, the Banff Centre, National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Dartmouth College, CalArts, Flagler College, and I.D.E.A. Space in Colorado Springs. In 2017, Red Star was awarded the Louis Comfort Tiffany Award and in 2018 she received a Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship. In 2019 Red Star will have her first career survey exhibition at the Newark Museum in Newark New Jersey.

Red Star holds a BFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, and an MFA in sculpture from University of California, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Portland, OR.