Cannupa Hanska Luger (born 1979) is a Native American interdisciplinary artist based in

New Mexico New Mexico is a state in the Southwestern United States, Southwestern region of the United States. It is one of the Mountain States of the southern Rocky Mountains, sharing the Four Corners region with Utah, Colorado, and Arizona. It also ...

whose community-oriented artworks address

indigenous peoples There is no generally accepted definition of Indigenous peoples, although in the 21st century the focus has been on self-identification, cultural difference from other groups in a state, a special relationship with their traditional territ ...

environmental justice Environmental justice is a social movement that addresses injustice that occurs when poor or marginalized communities are harmed by hazardous waste, resource extraction, and other land uses from which they do not benefit. The movement has gene ...

and gender violence issues. Luger is an enrolled citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation and is of

Mandan The Mandan () are a Native American tribe of the Great Plains who have lived for centuries primarily in what is now North Dakota. They are enrolled in the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation. About half of the Mandan still ...

Hidatsa The Hidatsa ( ) are a Siouan people. They are enrolled in the federally recognized Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation in North Dakota. Their language is related to that of the Crow, and they are sometimes considered a pa ...

Arikara The Arikara ( ), also known as Sahnish,
''Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation.'' (Retrieved Sep 29, 2011) ...

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language Lakota ( ), also referred to as Lakhota, Teton or Teton Sioux, is a Siouan languages, Siouan language spoken by the Lakota people of ...

, Austrian, and Norwegian heritage.

Early life

Cannupa Hanska Luger was born and raised in

Fort Yates, North Dakota Fort Yates is a city in Sioux County, North Dakota, United States. It is the tribal headquarters of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and county seat of Sioux County. Since 1970 the population has declined markedly from more than 1,100 residents, a ...

, on the

Standing Rock Reservation The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe of North & South Dakota controls the Standing Rock Reservation (), which straddles the border between North and South Dakota in the United States, and is inhabited by ethnic "Hunkpapa and Sihasapa bands of Lakot ...

. His parents are Kathy "Elk Woman" Whitman (

Fort Berthold Reservation The Fort Berthold Indian Reservation is a U.S. Indian reservation in western North Dakota that is home for the federally recognized Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nation, also known as the Three Affiliated Tribes. The reservation includes lands on ...

) and Robert "Bruz" Luger. After his parents divorced, he moved with his mother and five siblings to

Phoenix, Arizona Phoenix ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of cities and towns in Arizona#List of cities and towns, most populous city of the U.S. state of Arizona. With over 1.6 million residents at the 2020 census, it is the ...

, where his mother, an artist, sought a marketplace for carved stone sculptures. He spent summers on his father's ranch on the Standing Rock Reservation. The artist credits his mother and his ancestors for providing the confidence to pursue a livelihood as an artist and to develop a personal creative voice.

Education

In 2011, Luger received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in studio arts from the

Institute of American Indian Arts The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed ...

Exhibitions and public artwork

Luger's large-scale installations, social sculptures and performances use video, sound, and a range of sculptural materials to engage in "political activism in order to communicate stories about twenty-first-century indigeneity." His work has been exhibited at the

Princeton University Art Museum The Princeton University Art Museum (PUAM) is the Princeton University gallery of art, located in Princeton, New Jersey. With a collecting history that began in 1755, the museum was formally established in 1882, and now houses over 117,000 work ...

Museum of Northern Arizona The Museum of Northern Arizona is a museum in Flagstaff, Arizona, United States, established as a repository for Indigenous material and natural history specimens from the Colorado Plateau. The museum was founded in 1928 by zoologist Dr. Harol ...

, the

Autry Museum of the American West The Autry Museum of the American West (Autry National Center) is a museum in Los Angeles, California, dedicated to exploring an inclusive history of the American West. Founded in 1988, the museum presents a wide range of exhibitions and pub ...

in Los Angeles, the

Peabody Essex Museum The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, US, is a successor to the East India Marine Society, established in 1799. It combines the collections of the former Peabody Museum of Salem (which acquired the Society's collection) and th ...

, the Center for Visual Arts, Denver, and the Galerie Orenda in Paris, France, as well as the

Museum of Arts and Design The Museum of Arts and Design (MAD), based in Manhattan, New York City, collects, displays, and interprets objects that document contemporary and historic innovation in craft, art, and design. In its exhibitions and educational programs, the ...

in New York City that honored him with the inaugural Burke Prize. Luger has also exhibited at the

Gardiner Museum The George R. Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art (commonly shortened to the Gardiner Museum) is a ceramics museum in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The museum is situated within University of Toronto's St. George campus, in downtown Toronto. The museum b ...

Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art is a museum of American art in Bentonville, Arkansas. The museum, founded by Alice Walton and designed by Moshe Safdie, officially opened on 11 November 2011. It offers free public admission. Overview ...

Washington Project for the Arts Washington Project for the Arts (WPA) is an American non-profit arts organization founded in 1975, dedicated to the support and aid of artists in the Washington, D.C. area. Early history Alice Denney, a contemporary art collector active on the W ...

, and the

National Center for Civil and Human Rights The National Center for Civil and Human Rights is a museum dedicated to the achievements of the civil rights movement in the United States and the broader worldwide human rights movement. Located in downtown Atlanta, Georgia, the museum opened ...

, and at Art Mûr in Montreal. Luger's installation, ''Every One,'' has been exhibited at the

Museum of International Folk Art The Museum of International Folk Art is a state-run institution in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. It is one of many cultural institutions operated by the New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs. History The museum was founded by Flor ...

, the

and the

Denver Art Museum The Denver Art Museum (DAM) is an art museum located in the Civic Center of Denver, Colorado. With an encyclopedic collection of more than 70,000 diverse works from across the centuries and world, the DAM is one of the largest art museums betwe ...

. It is composed of 4,000 individually handmade ceramic beads, collected from Native and other communities throughout the United States and Canada, to represent a collective portrait of missing or murdered indigenous women, girls and LGBTQ victims of gender violence. Luger says of the work, "I didn't do this alone, I did it on the shoulders of giants with a pile of bones under each foot." He emphasizes the collaborative process, "It took hundreds of people to make it." He has had numerous solo exhibitions including the 2013 show at the

Museum of Contemporary Native Arts The Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) is a public tribal land-grant college in Santa Fe, New Mexico, United States. The college focuses on Native American art. It operates the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA), which is housed ...

in Santa Fe, New Mexico, ''Cannupa Hanska Luger Stereotype: Misconceptions of the Native American''; a 2016 show, ''Every line is a song Each shape is a story'', at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, Georgia; and a 2019 solo show, ''Every One'' at the

, in Toronto Ontario. Luger is well known for his ''Mirror Shield Project'' deployed at the

Dakota Access Pipeline protests The Dakota Access Pipeline Protests or the Standing Rock Protests, also known by the hashtag #NODAPL, NoDAPL, were a series of grassroots Native Americans in the United States, Native American protests against the construction of the Dakota Ac ...

at Standing Rock in 2016. He designed and fabricated 100 easily made, inexpensive masonite and mirrored-vinyl shields, and posted an instructional video of the fabrication process on social media. A Minneapolis-based group made 500 additional shields with help from Jack Becker of the non-profit organization, Forecast Public Art, and Rory Wakemup from the Minneapolis organization, All My Relations Arts, who facilitated a workshop by the artist. He organized the ''Lazy Stitch'' exhibition at the Ent Center for Contemporary Art,

University of Colorado, Colorado Springs The University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) is a Public university, public research university in Colorado Springs, Colorado. It is one of four campuses that make up the University of Colorado system. As of Fall 2023, UCCS had over 11 ...

, Galleries of Contemporary Art in 2018. In 2019, his work was presented in a one-person exhibition and performance piece, ''A Frayed Knot/Afraid Not'', and a solo exhibition, ''Future Ancestral Technologies: nágshibi'', dealing with Indigenous science fiction, at the

Emerson College Emerson College is a private college in Boston, Massachusetts, United States. It also maintains campuses in Los Angeles and Well, Limburg, Netherlands (Kasteel Well). Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a "school of Public Speaking, o ...

Media Art Gallery. In 2020, his work was presented in the ''Larger than Memory: Contemporary Art from Indigenous North America'', exhibition at the

Heard Museum The Heard Museum is a private, not-for-profit museum in Phoenix, Arizona, United States, dedicated to the advancement of American Indian art. It presents the stories of American Indian people from a first-person perspective, as well as exhibitio ...

. Also in 2020, Luger co-directed and designed costumes for ''Sweet Land'', a site-specific, multi-perspectival opera about

colonialism Colonialism is the control of another territory, natural resources and people by a foreign group. Colonizers control the political and tribal power of the colonised territory. While frequently an Imperialism, imperialist project, colonialism c ...

, that was presented at the Los Angeles State Historical Park and which was awarded best new opera by the

Music Critics Association of North America The Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) is a society for music critics of classical music in the United States and Canada. Founded in 1956, the MCANA is a member of the National Music Council and both publishes an annual newslett ...

for 2020. In 2021 Luger presented his debut solo exhibition in New York at Garth Greenan gallery titled ''New Myth'', And presented the installation ''Something to Hold Onto'' addressing personal stories in relation to migration and border patrol issues at the southwest U.S. border.

Collaborations

While at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Luger was part of the multi-tribal Humble Art Collective in Santa Fe. Later collaborative projects include ''Mirror Shields,'' and ''Every One''. Luger has also collaborated with the collective union of artists
Winter Count
the artist collective
Postcommodity
and the Indigenous activist collective R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance and Empowerment.

Awards and honors

In 2015 Luger received a Multicultural Fellowship Award from the National Council on Education for the Ceramic Arts. In 2018, the artist was awarded with the first Burke Prize for American studio crafts from the

in New York. In 2016 he received a National Artist Fellowship from the

Native Arts and Cultures Foundation The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) is a 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that supports Native American artists, culture bearers, and Native Americans in the United States, Native-led arts organizations, providi ...

. In 2019 Luger was awarded a

Joan Mitchell Foundation Joan Mitchell (February 12, 1925 – October 30, 1992) was an American artist who worked primarily in painting and printmaking, and also used pastel and made other works on paper. She was an active participant in the New York School of artis ...

Painters & Sculptors Grant, was a 2019

Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (YBCA) is a multi-disciplinary Contemporary art, contemporary arts center in San Francisco, California, United States. Located in Yerba Buena Gardens, YBCA features visual art, performance, and film/video that cel ...

Honoree, and in 2020, he received a Creative Capital Award, an artist fellowship from the Craft Research Fund, and A Blade of Grass Foundation fellowship for socially engaged art. In 2020 he was awarded an Artist Research Fellowship at the Smithsonian

National Museum of the American Indian The National Museum of the American Indian is a museum in the United States devoted to the culture of the Indigenous peoples of the Americas. It is part of the Smithsonian Institution group of museums and research centers. The museum has three ...

. In 2022 he was awarded the Guggenheim fellowship in Fine Arts.

Public collections

North America Native Museum The North American Native Museum, or Nordamerika Native Museum (NONAM), is a museum run by the City of Zurich, Switzerland. The museum specializes in the conservation, documentation, and presentation of ethnographic objects and artwork of Native Am ...

, Zürich, Switzerland *

, Denver, CO * IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM *

Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art is an art museum on the University of Oklahoma campus in Norman, Oklahoma. Overview The University of Oklahoma’s Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art holds over 20,000 objects in its permanent collection. The museum ...

, Norman, OK *

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is an art museum in New Haven, Connecticut. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University. Although it embraces all cultures and period ...

, New Haven, CT

References

External links

Official website

The artist fusing science fiction and Native ideas
(short video) {{Authority control 1979 births Living people American people of Austrian descent American people of Lakota descent American people of Norwegian descent Mandan people Hidatsa people Arikara people Native American male artists 21st-century Native American artists Artists from North Dakota Artists from New Mexico People from Sioux County, North Dakota Native American installation artists 21st-century American sculptors Native American sculptors Native American performance artists Native American people from New Mexico Native American people from North Dakota