Moira Redcorn, Ma^zha^ tseka Ma^thi^
Ruth Borum-Loveland, Soil Studies ...
Ashanti Chaplin, Drawing for Earth Elegy
ArtNow: The Soul Is a Wanderer
June 22, 2023 to Jan. 15, 2024
Eleanor Kirkpatrick Main Gallery
Party with a Purpose | 6 p.m. June 22 (includes performance of Dust to Dirge: An Earth Elegy by Ashanti Chaplin and Gabriel Royal)
Tickets available for purchase here
Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end.
You must make your own map.
— Joy Harjo, A Map to the Next World, 2000
Yatika Starr Fields, Go West Young Man
The Soul Is a Wanderer is the 2023 edition of the Oklahoma Contemporary ArtNow biennial exhibition, highlighting new and recent art from a selection of artists active in the state.
Thirteen cross-generational artists come together in this exhibition organized by Tulsa-based guest curator Lindsay Aveilhé. The Soul Is a Wanderer takes its title from a line in the poem A Map to the Next World by 2019-2022 United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (b. 1951, Tulsa; Muscogee Nation). The artists draw inspiration from the poem’s call to remember the past as we journey beyond the present by unearthing complex histories and imagining alternate routes toward emancipatory futures of our making.
Through distinct perspectives and approaches, the painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance, photography and ceramics in the exhibition capture moments of passage, reckoning and renewal. Together, the works in The Soul Is a Wanderer evoke the landscape of Oklahoma — its topography and our shared reality — as a site for questioning, dreaming and action.
Joseph Rushmore, Prosperity in No Known Place
Artists in the exhibition
- Ruth Borum-Loveland (b. 1982, Oklahoma City)
- Ashanti Chaplin (b. 1981, Tulsa)
- Isaac Diaz (b. 1998, Oklahoma City)
- Yusuf Etudaiye (b. 1958, Okene, Nigeria)
- Yatika Starr Fields (b. 1980, Stillwater, Okla.; Osage/Cherokee/Muscogee)
- Sterlin Harjo (b. 1979, Holdenville, Okla.; Seminole Nation of Oklahoma/Muscogee descent)
- Molly Kaderka (b. 1989, Austin, Texas)
- Kite (b. 1990, Sylmar, Calif.; Oglala Sioux Tribe)
- Robert Peterson (b. 1981, Denver, Colo.)
- Moira Redcorn (b. 1966, Pawhuska, Okla.; Osage Nation)
- Joseph Rushmore (b. 1984, Ada, Okla.)
- Elspeth Schulze (b. 1985, Grand Coteau, La.)
- Nathan Young (b. 1975, Tahlequah, Okla.; Delaware Tribe of Lenape Indians)
ArtNow 2023 Focus Awardee
The ArtNow 2023 Focus Awardee is director Sterlin Harjo, whose Oklahoma-centered filmography includes Four Sheets to the Wind (2007), Cepanvkuce Tutcenen (Three Little Boys) (2009), Barking Water (2009), This May Be the Last Time (2014) and Mekko (2015). Love and Fury (2020), a documentary on Native American creatives, reflects the Native instinct to “convert fury into love.” His groundbreaking Indigenous comedy series Reservation Dogs (premiered in 2021) was lauded by The Atlantic as “a genre-mixing, cliché-exploding series [that] captures coming of age as a Native kid like no TV show before it.” Harjo’s film featuring the poet Joy Harjo is made specifically for The Soul Is a Wanderer.
Guest curator
Tulsa-based guest curator Lindsay Aveilhé is currently director of the Gardiner Gallery of Art at Oklahoma State University. Recent curatorial projects include Sol LeWitt at the Reykjavík Art Museum (2020) and Sol LeWitt: Lines, Forms, Volumes at Galleria Alfonso Artiaco, Naples (2019). Aveilhé is editor of the Sol LeWitt Wall Drawings Catalogue Raisonné (Artifex Press, 2018) and co-creator of the Sol LeWitt mobile app made in collaboration with the LeWitt Estate and Microsoft (2020). She was contributing author to Locating LeWitt: Between Mind and Body (Yale University Press, 2021).
This exhibition is supported by George Records, Richard and Glenna Tanenbaum, The Kanady Family, E.L. and Thelma Gaylord Foundation, Annie Bohanon, Chickasaw Nation, Velocigo, Love’s Travel Stops, Flogistix, BancFirst/BancFirst Trust, Ad Astra, Scott Fischer, Joan S. Maguire, Margaret Freede, Kirkpatrick Oil Company, Delaware Resource Group, the Merrick Foundation, the Shirley and Bankhead Families, Volunteer Capital LLC, Pam and Bill Shdeed, Artform, G. David Neff and Suzanne Peck, Eli and Leslie Hellman, HumanKind Hospitality, NBC Oklahoma, Ryan Coe, Anonymous, Jane Harlow, O’Connor Family Foundation, Matt and Paula Thomas, Miles and Molly Tolbert, Jordan von Netzer, Lissa and John Blaschke, HSE Architects, David and Aimee Harlow, B.C. Clark Jewelers, United Mechanical, Billie Thrash, Lou C. Kerr/The Kerr Foundation, Cliff and Leslie Hudson, Robin and Brad Kreiger, Tinker Federal Credit Union, Virginia A. Meade, Amy Kirby, The Medallion Group, Jennifer and Dale Thurman, Lingo Construction, Charles L. Oppenheim, Mark and Julie Beffort, Inasmuch Foundation, Blair and Maggie Humphreys, Rand and Jeanette Elliott, Valerie Naifeh and George Catechis, Kam’s Kookery, Wander Folk Spirits and LALO Tequila.
Images:
Moira Redcorn, Ma^zha^ tseka Ma^thi^ (Moving to a New Country), 2022. Oil on canvas. 60 x 84 in. © Moira Redcorn. Photo: Cassandra Watson.
Ruth Borum-Loveland, Collection of found natural materials and Soil Studies, 2023. Soil pigment from Oklahoma and egg on paper. Dimensions variable. © Ruth Borum-Loveland. Image courtesy of the artist.
Ashanti Chaplin, Drawing for Earth Elegy, 2023. © Ashanti Chaplin. Image courtesy of the artist.
Yatika Starr Fields, Go West Young Man, 2023. Video. Interview of Lisa Snell by Fields; visuals along Route 66 edited by Patrick McNicholas. © Yatika Starr Fields. Image courtesy of the artist
Joseph Rushmore, Prosperity in No Known Place, 2023. Inkjet print. 8 x 10 in. © Joseph Rushmore. Image courtesy of the artist.
Sterlin Harjo. Photo: Shane Brown.
Lindsay Aveilhé. Photo: Lola Serrano.
