Principia College will welcome internationally acclaimed artist Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) for a free public lecture at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, in Wanamaker Hall on the College’s campus in Elsah, Illinois. Part of the Schmidt Family Lecture Series on Contemporary Art, the evening will feature a conversation about White Hawk’s multidisciplinary artistic practice, including painting, beadwork, quillwork, and film, as we0ll as the importance of creating space for Native art and voices.
Based in Minneapolis, White Hawk creates work rooted in painting and beadwork that brings together influences from Lakota and Euro/American abstraction. Her practice spans sculpture, installation, video, and performance, reflecting on cross-cultural experiences and the ways artistic traditions intersect and inform one another.
White Hawk’s work has received national and international recognition. She was featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial, and her mid-career survey, Dyani White Hawk: Love Language, was co-organized by the Walker Art Center and Remai Modern. Her work has also been featured in Speaking to Relatives, presented at the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art.
Her honors include fellowships and awards from the MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, Creative Capital, United States Artists, and Joan Mitchell Foundation, among others. Her work is held in the collections of prominent institutions, including the Brooklyn Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Guggenheim, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Walker Art Center, and Whitney Museum of American Art.
The lecture series is presented through Principia College's Center for the Arts, one of five interdisciplinary Academic Centers that serve as the hub of academic and social life at the College, bringing together related fields of study to connect ideas, people, and experiences.
"The Schmidt Family Lecture Series gives our students a direct, unfiltered encounter with someone who is actively shaping the contemporary art world,” said Director for the Center for the Arts Leah McFall. “That kind of access changes how students think about their own creative practice, and Dyani White Hawk's work and perspective make her exactly the voice the Center for the Arts exists to bring into students' lives."
White Hawk’s lecture offers audiences an opportunity to learn more about an artist whose work connects cultural traditions, materials, and contemporary artistic expression while inviting broader conversations about representation and whose stories are told through art.
The lecture is free and open to the public. It will begin at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 5, in Wanamaker Hall at Principia College, 1 Maybeck Place, Elsah, Illinois.
