Dear IAIA Community,

A memorial and celebration of life in honor of DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo (Diné, Taos Pueblo) ’21 is scheduled for Wednesday, December 1, 2021, 12–2 pm in the IAIA Gymnasium. This will be a COVID-safe gathering to pay tribute to DeAnna’s life and achievements as an IAIA student and alumna, as well as her accomplishments as an award-winning artist.

Additional information will be forthcoming the week of November 29, 2021.

Thank you,

Dr. Robert Martin (Cherokee)
IAIA President

About DeAnna Autumn Leaf Suazo

DeAnna (Diné, Taos Pueblo) graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Spring 2021 with a BFA in Studio Arts and was admitted into IAIA’s inaugural MFA in Studio Arts cohort in Summer 2021.

DeAnna loved to celebrate her Diné and Taos Pueblo heritage and to create art that reflected Pueblo cultural significance and aesthetics. Inspired by heroic figures of Japanese manga novels including “Sailor Moon,” she imbued her work with memory, resilience, and good intentions. Her most recent work emphasized figural paintings of strong Indigenous women who, in her words, “grind every day for a better community.”

DeAnna showed artwork at the Southwest Association for Indian Arts Market (SWAIA) for over a decade and was also a featured artist at many national arts markets, including the Heard Museum Indian Market and Fair, the Autry Museum Artist Market, and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian Artist Market. She was a SITE Santa Fe Scholar and a 2021 Taos Fine Arts Visionary Artist.

DeAnna’s artwork has been exhibited across the country, including recent shows at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts’ (MoCNA) 2021 BFA Exhibition Manifesting Our Destinies and the IAIA 2021 BFA Show A Retrospective of Change. She will be remembered as a dedicated student, a devoted friend, a kind person, and a passionate artist whose creativity knew no bounds.