Gallery Exhibition:
Counterpoints: Indigenous Female Perspectives

Dec 4 - Feb 2, 2027

Patton-Malott Gallery

Counterpoints: Indigenous Female Perspectives, guest-curated by IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts Chief Curator Dr. Manuela Well-Off-Man, will be on view at Anderson Ranch Art Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado from December 4, 2026 to February 2, 2027.

The exhibition highlights the work of four leading contemporary Native women artists—Sarah Ortegon Highwalker (Eastern Shoshone/Northern Arapaho), Anna Tsouhlarakis (Diné/Muscogee Creek/Greek), Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), and Melanie Yazzie (Diné). Though distinct in their practices and cultural backgrounds—these artists share several commonalities in their work, frequently centering Indigenous women’s experiences and voices and exploring personal and communal histories. Through multidisciplinary practices including painting, printmaking, and beadwork, they powerfully engage with themes such as cultural continuity, Indigenous identity, and resistance expressed via visual storytelling. Their work addresses gender, sovereignty, and representation while confronting dominant narratives with conceptual and political nuances.

Panel

Sarah Ortegon

Sarah Ortegon HighWalking was born in Denver, CO into a family of 12 children. Ortegon HighWalking graduated with her BFA from the Metropolitan State University of Denver in 2013. Ortegon HighWalking studied art history in Italy during the summer of 2012. The main theme in Ortegon High Walking’s work isher Indigenous Heritage and her relationship to the land. In 2013 Ortegon HighWalking was titled Miss Native American, USA and the focus of her platform was healthy living. She then traveled to Moldova in Europe, Guatemala, and throughout the U.S. performing the jingle dress dance with the Native Pride Dance Troupe. Ortegon HighWalking was the artist for the MALCS conference in Laramie, WY at the University of Wyoming and had a solo art exhibition. Ortegon HighWalking is also featured in PBS’s, “The Art of Home; A Wind River Story” which was nominated for an Emmy in August of 2020. She was an extra in NBC’s TV series, “Jamestown”, as well as Paramount TV series, “1923”. In March of 2020, Ortegon HighWalking collaborated with Choctaw artist Jeffery Gibson and performed in Times Square, NY for the Midnight Moment titled, “She Never Dances Alone.” This was featured on over 60 monitors in Times Square, NY from March 1, 2020 – July 31, 2020 at 11:57-Midnight each night. The in person jingle dress dance performance was March 7, 2020. Ortegon HighWalking has recently been accepted into the National Museum of Women in the Arts, “Women to Watch” Exhibit, happening in Washington, D.C. in 2024. She performed and danced in collaboration with Gibson at the Venice Biennale along with 26 other dancers in April of 2024 as well as October of 2024. Sarah Ortegon HighWalking will be participating in the Ucross Artist Residency in Ucross, WY May 26th – June 6th, 2025.

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Anna Tsouhlarakis

Anna Tsouhlarakis works in sculpture, installation, video, and performance. She graduated from Dartmouth College and Yale University, and has participated in various art residencies and exhibited nationally and internationally. Anna is Greek and Creek, and an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation.

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Dyani White Hawk

Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. White Hawk earned a MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2011) and BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2008). She served as Gallery Director and Curator for the All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis from 2011-2015. Support for White Hawk’s work has included the 2024 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2024 Creative Capital grant, 2023 MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, 2021 Anonymous Was a Woman Award, Academy of Arts and Letters Award, 2021 and 2013 McKnight Foundation Fellowship, 2020 Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize, 2019 United States Artists Fellowship in Visual Art, Eiteljorg Fellowship for Contemporary Art, Jerome Hill Artists Fellowship, Forecast for Public Art Mid-Career Development Grant, 2018 Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists, 2017 and 2015 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowships and 2014 Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant. She has participated in residencies in Australia, Russia, and Germany. Her work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Denver Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Tweed Museum of Art, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Akta Lakota Museum among other public and private collections. She is represented by Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis.

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Melanie Yazzie

As a printmaker, painter, and sculptor, Melanie Yazzie’s work draws upon her rich Diné (Navajo) cultural heritage. Her work follows the Diné dictum “walk in beauty” literally, creating beauty and harmony. As an artist, she works to serve as an agent of change by encouraging others to learn about social, cultural, and political phenomena shaping the contemporary lives of Native peoples in the United States and beyond. Her work incorporates both personal experiences as well as the events and symbols from Dine culture. Her work is informed and shaped by personal experiences. Ms. Yazzie uses her travels around the world to connect with other indigenous peoples. Her visits to New Zealand, the Arctic, the Pueblos in the Southwest, and to indigenous peoples of Russia, these travels have been the impetus for continued dialogue about Indigenous cultural practices, language, song, story-telling, and survival. Ms. Yazzie has exhibited widely, both in the United States and abroad. Her work is in the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design, Print Collection, Providence, the Museum of Contemporary Native Art in Santa Fe, New Mexico, the Kennedy Museum of Art, Art Collection, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, Rhodes University, Print Collection, Grahamstown, South Africa, to name a few. She has been reviewed in Focus Magazine, Santa Fe, the Los Angeles Times, New Zealand Herald, and she is mentioned in Printmaking in the Sun by Dan Welden and Pauline Muir and The Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multi Centered Society by Lucy Lippard. She has had over 500 group and solo exhibitions combined. Yazzie makes prints, sculptures, paintings, and mixed media works. Her work can always be found at the Glenn Green Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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