On Wendy Red Star

For the summer issue, we asked ten artists, scholars, and writers to respond to one artwork by Wendy Red Star, on the occasion of her traveling exhibition A Scratch on the Earth. Organized by Nadiah Rivera Fellah and Tricia Laughlin Bloom at the Newark Museum, the show is currently on view at the Columbus Museum of Art in Ohio.

Born in 1981, Red Star is a member of the Crow (Apsáalooke) Tribe of Montana. Her wide-ranging artistic practice includes photography, installation, collage, textile, sculpture, and video to explore Indigenous identity, the effects of settler colonialism, and the “survivance” of her people. The responses that follow consider a number of Red Star’s series, from annotated historical photographs to a 360-degree video installation. Contributors make note of the various responses that Red Star’s work elicits, from a sense of discovery, to discomfort, and even to humor—artist Gina Osterloh writes that Red Star creates “a scaffold of personhood that touches, simultaneously acknowledges, and lifts away from portraiture’s underlying violent silencing and colonialist frameworks,” while poet Tiffany Midge remarks that Red Star’s “great satire will add years to one’s life.”