New Mexico-based multidisciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger will talk about how he creates monumental installations, sculpture and performance to communicate urgent stories of 21st Century Indigeneity in the final lecture of the School of Art’s 2025-26 Visiting Artists and Scholars Endowment (VASE) season.
His Thursday, April 2, talk will be held at 5:30 p.m. at the Center for Creative Photography, 1030 N. Olive Road.
Incorporating ceramics, steel, fiber, repurposed materials, video, sound and performance, Luger activates speculative fiction, engages in land-based actions of repair and practices empathetic response through social collaboration. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota. Luger combines critical cultural analysis with dedication and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages. His bold visual storytelling presents new ways of seeing our collective humanity while foregrounding an Indigenous worldview.
“My practice is rooted in the continuum of generations before me, the urgency for Indigenous visibility in this moment and the dreaming of Indigenous futures,” Luger says. He adds: “Whether working with institutions, communities or with the land itself, my work is inherently social and requires engagement.”
Luger (b. 1979) is a 2025 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellow and a 2025 Ourworlds Immersive Visual Arts Award recipient. He received a 2024 Herb Alpert Award in the Arts and is a 2024 Monument Lab Fellow. He is a 2023 SOROS Arts Fellow, a 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of a 2021 United States Artists Fellowship Award for Craft and was named a 2021 GRIST Change Maker. Luger is a 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 inaugural Burke Prize.
Luger’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally including the Sharjah Biennial 16, United Arab Emirates, the 81st Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the 14th Shanghai Biennale at the Power Station of Art, Shanghai, China, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the Gardiner Museum, Toronto, Kunsthal KAdE, Netherlands, Art Gallery of Alberta, Canada, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Arkansas, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights, Georgia, among others. His work is in numerous public collections including the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, Nordamerika Native Museum, Zürich, Switzerland, and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA. Luger is represented by Garth Greenan Gallery in New York.
- Artist website: cannupahanska.com
- Instagram: @cannupahanska
- VASE website: vase.art.arizona.edu
