First and Second Round of Participants for 2017-2018 MoCNA Social Engagement Art Residency

IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) announces its 2017–2018 first round of Social Engagement Arts Residents,and currently, it is funded by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Previously, this program was funded by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI). Both partnerships have offered flexibility to mold a program based on Native artist leadership and support MoCNA’s goals of activating contemporary Native artist capacity, community building, and the Native American Fine Art Movement.

The first round of residents met in Santa Fe, NM, from October 22–November 1, 2017 and included Composer Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (Chickasaw) and Playwright Rhiana Yazzie (Navajo).

Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate, photograph courtesy the artist

Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate (Composer)

Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate has been praised and honored for “his ability to effectively infuse classical music with American Indian nationalism” (Washington Post). Tate, born in Norman, Oklahoma, is a citizen of the Chickasaw Nation and is dedicated to the development of American Indian classical composition. In 2016, Tate participated in Music Alive, a national three-year residency program of the League of American Orchestras and New Music USA. As Composer-in-Residence with South Dakota Symphony Orchestra (SDSO), he will participate in the third phase of SDSO’s Lakota Music Project. Performed commissioned works include the National Symphony Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony and Chorus, Detroit Symphony Orchestra, Minnesota Orchestra, South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra, Canterbury Voices, Oklahoma City Philharmonic, Colorado Ballet, Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival, Philadelphia Classical Symphony, and Santa Fe Desert Chorale.

Tate is a three-time commissioned recipient of the American Composers Forum and received a 2011 Emmy Award for his work on the Oklahoma Educational Television Authority documentary, The Science of Composing. In 2008, he was appointed Creativity Ambassador for Oklahoma. Tate’s recent commissions include his Muscogee Hymn Suite for Tulsa Symphony Orchestra, his Ponca Indian Cantata for Hildegard Center for the Arts, and his Chickasaw Oratorio, Misha’ Sipokni’ (The Old Ground), for Canterbury Voices and Oklahoma City Philharmonic. Tate has held Composer-in-Residence roles for New Music USA Music Alive, Oklahoma City’s NewView Summer Academy, Oklahoma Medical Research Foundation, Joyce Foundation/American Composers Forum, and Grand Canyon Music Festival Native American Composer Apprentice Project. Tate was the founding composition instructor for the Chickasaw Summer Arts Academy and taught composition to American Indian high school students in Minneapolis, MN and Native students in Toronto, Ontario. Tate has a Bachelor’s Degree in Piano Performance from Northwestern University and Master’s Degree in Piano Performance and Composition from The Cleveland Institute of Music, receiving the 2006 Alumni Achievement Award.

Rhiana Yazzie, photograph courtesy the artist

Rhiana Yazzie (Playwright)

Rhiana Yazzie is a Navajo playwright based in Minnesota. She is a 2016–2017 Playwrights’ Center McKnight Fellow, a two-time Playwrights’ Center Jerome Fellow, Playwrights’ Center Core Member, William Inge Center playwright in residence, Resident at the biennial Bonderman National Theatre for Youth Symposium, and the Kennedy Center’s New Visions/New Voices. She created New Native Theatre in 2009, a company based in Minnesota. Productions include Native Man the Musical, and 2012: The Musical! Her play, Chile Pod, commissioned by La Jolla Playhouse, toured to 18,000 youth in Southern California schools and communities. She is the three-time winner of the Native Radio Theatre annual new play contest. Her radio play The Best Place to Grow Pumpkins received an Honorable Mention at the ImagiNative Film Festival in Toronto. Other plays include Asdzani Shash: The Woman Who Turned into a Bear, The Long Flight (translated into Spanish and presented at the 30th World Congress of the International Theatre Institute, UNESCO in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico), This Land Had Seen War Before was published in a 2008 anthology, and Birthed from Scorched Hearts: Women respond to War.

Spring 2018 Social Engagement Art Residents include Clay and Textile Artist Anita Fields (Osage) and Filmmaker Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians).

Anita Fields, photograph courtesy the artist

Anita Fields (Clay and Textile Artist)

Born in Oklahoma, Native American artist Anita Fields creates works of clay and textile that reflect the worldview of her Osage culture. Her work represents the disruption of balance found within the earth and our lives, and more broadly, early Osage notions of duality, such as earth and sky, male and female. Fields’ sculptures were exhibited in Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation in New York City. Her work was featured in the 8th Native American Fine Art Invitational at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. Her work was also included in Who Stole the Teepee?, National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian, New York, and the Legacy of the Generations: Pottery by American Indian Women, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington, D.C.

Fields has been awarded numerous residencies, including the Eitelljorg Museum’s RARE program and the Andy Warhol Fine Arts Residency at the Heard Museum. Fields was one of 47 Native American delegates funded by the Kellogg Foundation and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), to travel to South Africa for The Answers Lie Within. Fields is a 2017 fellow for the Kaiser Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Her work has been published in Southwest Art magazine, American Craft, Ms. Magazine, American Style, and Native Peoples. Field’s work can be found in several collections, such as the Museum of Art and Design in New York City, the Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico, Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, Arkansas, and the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona.

Sky Hopinka, photograph courtesy the artist

Sky Hopinka (Filmmaker)

Filmmaker Hopinka (Ho-Chunk Nation of Wisconsin/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians) was born and raised in Ferndale, Washington and spent a number of years in Palm Springs and Riverside, California, and Portland, Oregon, and is currently based out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In Portland, he studied and taught chinuk wawa, a language Indigenous to the Lower Columbia River Basin. His work centers around personal positions of homeland and landscape, designs of language and facets of culture contained within. His films also explore the play between the accessibility of the known and the unknowable. He received his BA from Portland State University in Liberal Arts and his MFA in Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

His work has played at various festivals including ImagineNATIVE Media + Arts Festival, Images Festival, Courtisane Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, American Indian Film Festival, Sundance Film Festival, Antimatter Film Festival, Chicago Underground Film Festival, FLEXfest, and the LA Film Festival. He was a part of the 2016 Wisconsin Triennial and the 2017 Whitney Biennial. He was awarded jury prizes at the Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, the More with Less Award at the 2016 Images Festival, the Tom Berman Award for Most Promising Filmmaker at the 54th Ann Arbor Film Festival, and 3rd Prize at the 2015 Media City Film Festival.

For more information, please contact IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) Program Manager Andrea R. Hanley (Navajo) at (505) 428-5907 or ahanley@iaia.edu.