An exhibit that opened last month in the Minneapolis American Indian Center (MAIC) breaks new ground for the center and for its Two Rivers Art Gallery.
“We Are Still Queer” features 11 queer Indigenous artists with a mix of paintings, sculpture, textiles and prints. The show opened on June 24, the same night as New Native Theatre’s fourth annual two-spirit powwow at MAIC.
Two Rivers curatorial assistant Sydney Ockenga hopes the show will open conversations in the Native community. Ockenga moved from Flandreau, South Dakota, to Minneapolis to find a community that embraced their queer and Native identities.
“In a lot of non-white spaces there’s a lot of questioning of queerness, whether it’s a product of colonization or people saying ‘We didn’t use the word queer,’ which to be fair we probably didn’t,” Ockenga said.
“But it also isn’t a new concept in Indigenous communities. The verbiage around it might be new to us because we’re colonized and lost whichever original language we used. If anything, we’re probably more connected to our culture through our queerness.”
St. Paul artist Leila Verley, who is featured in the show, said queer art is underrepresented in Indigenous spaces. Verley is Fond Du Lac Ojibwe with Muscogee ancestry and attends the Institute of American Indian Art in Santa Fe.
Verley’s featured piece in the exhibit is titled “The Lovers” and displays two hands linked by pinkie fingers with tattoos traditionally given to Inuit women. Verley said it was created as part of a tarot-themed print exchange between 30 artists.
“Making art that’s specifically queer can be looked down upon or get you some side-eyes from people,” Verley said. “On the back of my tarot card, I put orchids because orchids are very symbolic of sapphic people, and I’ve had some people be like, ‘Oh I thought they were just because you like flowers, and they’re pretty.’”
Sam St. John is a queer Indigenous artist who lives in Hastings. Her painting “Take Me As I Am” shows a feminine body with the face of a bear accompanied by butterflies to represent her feelings of transformation, and water to symbolize her healing and residence near the Mississippi River in Hastings.
“I’m really inspired by a lot of Frida Kahlo’s use of symbolism to tackle heavy and emotional topics,” she said. “An example is like loving my body, loving my hair, loving my identity as someone that’s Indigenous and mixed-race.”
Ockenga chose the piece as the show’s centerpiece because of its arresting size and message. “It really did a good job at representing the rawness that comes out a lot of times in queer art,” they said.
St. John has two other works in the show, “Cosmic Womb” and “Amethyst Womb,” which celebrate the intersectionality of femininity and cosmology.
“I call myself a soul alchemist, and I use pain and my life experiences and transform it into something,” she said. “I call the two portals ‘power portals’ to represent the power in the womb. Also, when we go into sweat we’re in Mother Earth’s womb.”
University of Minnesota graduate Jearica Fountain, creator of Indigenizing Cartoons, is also featured in the show.
Fountain is from the Pit River tribe as well as Nisenan and is enrolled in the Karuk tribe from Northern California. She identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community and considers herself fluid when it comes to expression because she was not exposed to labels until her young adulthood.
“One of the pieces says ‘Queerness is sacred’ because I really want to empower the community to share that it’s something that’s been sacred throughout many Indigenous cultures globally,” Fountain said. “This is a part of our culture. It’s not a trendy, new thing.”
MAIC houses programs ranging from the Culture Language and Art Network to the Boys and Girls Club, which brings visitors of all ages into the building. Ockenga said exposing youth to queer identities during a time of identity politics and fear has helped them understand the significance of free, accessible art.
“A lot of the youth, I know their parents also, it’s their first experience in a space like an art gallery,” Ockenga said. “So even learning how they interact with this space as a technically common colonized space. I mean, we have white walls. That’s a very colonial aesthetic, but how can we still expand on that and let it be a space that they know they can occupy?”
Julian Tollefson grew up coloring with crayons trying to draw their surroundings and said the inspiration behind their two pieces shown in the exhibit come from balancing both feminine and masculine energies. Tollefson describes themselves as nonbinary but faces hesitation with using the term “two-spirit” due to their white and Native ethnicity.
“Duality” is Tollefson’s smaller piece and hangs towards the back of the gallery space and tells a story of balancing both feminine and masculine energies in a healthy way, while “Self Love” is a bigger print embodying their personal feelings towards being nonbinary. Both pieces are what Tollefson calls stylized portraits that have psychedelic vibes to them.
“‘Self love’ is the bigger one; that’s actually a print. I did some recoloring from the original and just changed it to be nonbinary colors,” Tollefson said. “That one is more about all different forms of love and kind of how my identity as a queer individual is sacred.”
Before colonization, two-spirit people were honored and feared in many tribes due to their ability of having two spirits — both masculine and feminine — and a dual perspective of the world. But Catholic missionaries, and later residential schools, imposed a strict view of male and female roles on Indigenous peoples.
“Looking at how queer identities were treated before colonialism and the way they were honored and loved and how they had a part in society,” Tollefson said. “I kind of look towards that when I’m feeling hopeless, and I feel like it’s really easy to feel hopeless today with this climate.”
Tollefson is a sophomore attending the University of Minnesota Duluth, studying art education with hopes to become an art teacher. They said having an art exhibit dedicated to Indigenous queer artists is especially important in Minnesota.
“I feel like our voices have been nothing but silenced for so long,” Tollefson said. “I just feel like we have really important things to say, especially being queer, especially being two-spirit. You bring in that voice of healing to trauma and colonialism especially in today’s era. Our communities really need healing, and I feel like we bring that.”
What: “We Are Still Queer” exhibit
When: Monday-Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Through Sept. 12
Where: Two Rivers Gallery, 1530 E. Franklin Ave., Minneapolis
More info: 2riversartgallery.org
