Dwayne Wilcox, Paper Chief, ledger paper Plains headdress, 2014, The Heritage Center, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, South Dakota

The exhibition examines Dwayne Wilcox’s (Oglala Lakota) own lived experience as an artist creating work that is linked to historic forms of narrative communication of his Lakota people and post-modernism in its powerfully ironic stance. Wilcox’s recent series of ledger drawings address many social ills facing residents of the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota where Wilcox grew up. His characteristic humor is evident in many of the works; however, the tone of most of these drawings is darker, dealing with substance abuse, domestic violence, and incarceration. The works reflect the underlying issues of indigenous identity, historic collective trauma and the culture of hopelessness in a place like Pine Ridge. Wilcox’s three-dimensional works stretch the boundaries of the definition of ledger art.

Dwayne Wilcox is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe and currently resides in Rapid City, SD. His work has been exhibited at the National Museum of the American Indian in New York City, Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, OK, Red Cloud Heritage Museum, Pine Ridge, SD, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, MA, the University of Alaska, Anchorage, among many other venues. He is the 2019 recipient of the South Dakota Governors Awards in the Arts in the “Distinction in Creative Achievement” category.