Dyani White Hawk

In Untitled (Red and Orange) (2022) a gold ground offsets alternating horizontal bands of earth-red paint and stacked rows of short vertical strokes of white reminiscent of porcupine quillwork. 24k gold beads are stitched onto the canvas, demarcating the individual fields of colour and allowing light to reflect and refract across the painting’s uneven material surface. Working with different materials and scales – from extreme close up to broad perspectives – her abstract imagery takes on a level of complexity that is supported by the painting’s ‘layered materiality’. White Hawk states that the use of glass beads in her work references the history of cross-cultural trade, and the ways that Lakota people have incorporated glass beads within ‘a lineage of artwork that speaks to connections between land and life’.