The San Antonio Museum of Art (SAMA) will present a mid-career survey of the work of Portland-based artist Wendy Red Star starting February 11, 2022. The exhibition Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth features forty works drawn from the collection of The Newark Museum of Art and museums across the country and includes photography, textiles, and film and sound installations, produced over a period of fifteen years. At the heart of the exhibition, an immersive video will be screened inside a sweat lodge recreated within the gallery. (San Antonio Museum of Art, 2021)

An enrolled member of the Apsáalooke (Crow) Tribe, Red Star works across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society. Drawing on pop culture, conceptual art strategies, and the Crow traditions within which she was raised, Red Star pushes photography in new directions—from self-portraiture to photo-collage and altered historical photographs—to bring to life her unique perspective on American history.

The importance of family, Indigenous roots of feminism, Crow mythology, history of the Montana landscape, and the pageantry of Crow Fest are among the subjects that Red Star brings to life in this exhibition. The artist’s exploration of ancestral Apsáalooke land culminates in the recreation of a sweat lodge. Inside, an immersive 360-degree video is projected onto the interior walls joining imagery from Crow mythology and the Montana landscape. Another large-scale wall installation maps the ancestral lands of Apsáalooke women. To reclaim the matrilineal society disrupted by the reservation system, Red Star contacted women across the country and researched their familial ties to the land. Also included is a powerful series of self-portraits, titled Apsáalooke Feminist, for which Red Star and her daughter Beatrice pose wearing traditional elk-tooth dresses, symbols of Crow womanhood. 

The title A Scratch on the Earth is a translation of the Apsáalooke word Annúkaxua and refers to the period after 1880 when U.S. government policy prioritized keeping Crow people on their reservation. Red Star mines archives to investigate the boundaries of the Crow reservation and how they came to be negotiated throughout the nineteenth century. Growing from the somewhat arbitrary borders that were historically imposed on the Apsáalooke, the exhibition also explores how boundaries between cultural, racial, social, and gender categories have subsequently been reinforced, and how they blur across time and space.

The exhibition was organized by The Newark Museum of Art and curated by Nadiah Rivera Fellah, guest curator, and Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Newark’s Curator of American Art. In San Antonio, it is generously funded by The Ford Foundation, The Betty Stieren Kelso Foundation, and The Brown Foundation, Inc. It is accompanied by a richly illustrated catalogue published by The Newark Museum of Art. A selection of programs and a symposium featuring the artist will also be offered during the exhibition.

“Red Star’s work engages images and materials that are rich with meaning to initiate vital conversations about identity, culture, and American history. SAMA is thrilled to share this important exhibition with our community.”

Lana Meador, SAMA’s Associate Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art