At the intersection of Indigenous art, cultural theory, and the force of settler colonialism sits the work of Jolene Rickard, an enrolled citizen of the Skarù·rę7 – Tuscarora Nation, Turtle Clan.
The visual historian, artist and curator is associate professor of Indigenous art in Cornell University’s departments of art and history of art. Bridging the fields of Indigenous studies and art history, Rickard will speak at 2 p.m. today in the Hall of Philosophy, continuing the Week Six Interfaith Lecture Series theme of “The Arts: Expressions from the Soul.”
Rickard’s research has taken her across the world, placing her at the forefront of comparative understandings of global Indigenous art; in the art world, her recent exhibitions include “Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography,” at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and “Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists” at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The co-curator of two of the four permanent exhibitions for the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Rickard’s 2023 curatorial intervention “Deskaheh in Geneva, 1923-2023: Defending Haudenosaunee Sovereignty” considers the visibility of Indigenous governance within the context of the United Nations.
Also in 2023, Rickard contributed an essay on “Sovereignty and Futurity” to The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada, and as a writer, she sits on the editorial board of American Art.
A founding board member for the Otsego Institute for Native American Art and an adviser to the Great Lakes Alliance for the Study of Aboriginal Arts and Culture, Rickard also examines how art, ecology and migration in the Americas are entangled. One of these projects is Cornell’s collaboration with Gayogohó:nǫ7 (Cayuga Nation) works to preserve both biodiversity and Indigenous cultural traditions, like language, in a program that pairs propagating heritage plants and a course on the Cayuga language. As an artist, one of her most well-known works is “3 Sisters,” a 1989 black-and-white photograph and color Xerox with Rickard’s sleeping face interposed with squash, beans and corn.
