Indigenous Artists in Whitney Biennial

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Rebecca Belmore, prototype for “ishkode (fire),” 2021 (courtesy the artist; photo by Henri Robideau)

Two Indigenous artists – Rebecca Belmore and Duane Linklater – are among the 63 artists included in this year’s Whitney Biennial, which opens April 6 in New York. Also featured is work by the late Denyse Thomasos, who was born in Trinidad and raised in Toronto. 

The biennial – organized by the Whitney Museum – is billed as the longest-running survey of American art, although it also includes international artists. Originally scheduled for 2021, it was delayed due to the pandemic, and will continue to Sept. 5. 

Belmore, who is Anishinaabe and is based in Vancouver, represented Canada at the Venice Biennale in 2005 and received the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts in 2013. Her work was recently included in the first Winnipeg Indigenous Triennial, Naadohbii: To Draw Water, on until Feb. 6 at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. 

Linklater is Omaskêko Ininiwak and is based in North Bay, Ont. He received the Sobey Art Award in 2013, and has exhibited at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Art Gallery of Vancouver and many international institutions. 

Thomasos, a painter who died suddenly in 2012, was a professor at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey. She won more than 20 awards over her lifetime, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1997. Her exhibition, Odyssey, is on view at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria until Feb. 20.

Other artists in the biennial include Chilean-born Alfredo Jaar, Cuban American Coco Fusco, as well as Charles Ray and Ellen Gallagher, both American.

Source: Whitney Museum