Dyani White Hawk

Early life and education

White Hawk was born and raised in Madison, Wisconsin. Her mother was adopted from the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota to non-Native Wisconsin parents, and as a young child in Wisconsin, the artist had very little connection to her Rosebud family. It wasn't until she was a teen that she began learning about her Lakota ancestry and grappling with issues of heritage and identity. According to White Hawk "my life experiences have been a continual negotiation of both Western and Indigenous educations, value systems, and worldviews."

White Hawk received her first undergraduate degree in 2003 from Haskell Indian Nations University. In 2008, she earned a BFA in 2-D Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), and in 2011 she graduated from University of Wisconsin-Madison with an MFA in Studio Arts.

White Hawk credits her mother with encouraging her artistic talent at a young age, but the artist's first painting was completed as part of her IAIA admission portfolio. Her early artwork tends to borrow influence from popular culture and street art. White Hawk cites later influences ranging from abstract modernists such as Mark Rothko and Marsden Hartley, to Native history traditional tribal art forms. Although she tends to favor artistic traditions specific to her Lakota tribe, White Hawk has also found influence in other Native artistic traditions, such as Navajo weaving.

Work

White Hawk is known for her easel-sized paintings that depict abstract compositions emphasizing saturated colors arranged in symmetrical and asymmetrical patterns. She often privileges patterns and lines that replicate quillwork, beadwork, and textiles. In the painting Seeing (2010), for instance, the square canvas is divided into nine smaller squares to create a gridded composition. But the grid yields to deep blue sky peppered with cumulus clouds that appear to recede into the distance; this interruption to the grid is also contained by it, as the sky occupies the central cruciform shape of the composition. Appearing to overlap this firmament are four beige-and-blue striped squares that anchor the painting in each corner. Of this painting, the artist writes: "The stripes alternate between the blue painterly sections which reference western abstract painting and the off white sections are painted to reference quillwork and lazy stitch beadwork. The work is about ones lived experiences and how these determine how we see, interpret or choose to view the world."

Primarily through abstraction, White Hawk examines the relationship of traditional art making in Native American communities to more contemporary practices. Often, her work comments on the problematic minimizing of Native artists versus the recognition given to Western artists who take influence from Native art forms. Moccasin toes, ledger drawings, blanket designs, porcupine quills, teepee forms and other Native American motifs often comprise the subjects of White Hawk's exacting oil paintings.

Though thoroughly modern/contemporary in the expression of her ideas and themes, White Hawk, both as a curator and as an artist, explores her cultural heritage. She writes: "As a woman of Sicangu Lakota and European ancestry, raised among Native communities within urban American environments, my work is an investigation of communal and personal definitions. It is a journey into understanding the history of this land and our relationships with and within it."

Dyani White Hawk has exhibited work at the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, and the Indian Arts and Culture Museum. Her work has been collected by the Akta Lakota Museum, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Wisconsin Union Art Collection, and the Robert Penn Collection of Contemporary Northern Plains Indian Art of the University of South Dakota.

White Hawk's work has been featured in group exhibitions at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the Universita Ca Foscari in Venice, Italy, the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe, and the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe. White Hawk is currently represented by Shiprock Santa Fe and Bockley Gallery.

Dyani White Hawk's painting earned the "Best of Classification" award at the 2011 Santa Fe Indian Art Market and a First Place in painting at the 2011 Northern Plains Indian Art Market. She was a SWAIA discovery fellowship recipient in 2012. In 2013, White Hawk was the recipient of the McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship. White Hawk was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant in 2014. In 2015, the artist was awarded a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Regional Artist Fellowship.

Solo Exhibitions