Avis Charley, Protectors, 2020, color pencil, India ink, antique paper

This exhibition, in the Lloyd Kiva New Gallery in the Museum Store, features Avis Charley’s (Spirit Lake Tribe, Diné) new ledger art painted on antique ledger paper. Charley explains, “It’s about challenging the popular historical black-and-white images of defeat of our people. It’s also about updating and reclaiming our narrative—celebrating our strength and presence, today and yesterday.”

The Museum Store will have four of Charley’s new ledger art works on display (available for purchase). For more information, please contact IAIA Stores Director Elissa W. Wheeler at (505) 428-5911 or at elissa.wheeler@iaia.edu.

About Avis Charley

Avis Charley (Spirit Lake Dakota/Diné), was born and raised in Los Angeles, California, and she a mother and an artist. Charley is a painter and a ledger artist, using colored pencils on antique documents. She enjoys depicting Native empowerment using the female form as her main subject. Charley relishes in bringing attention to, and celebrating, the evolution of the Native identity, from the pre-reservation period to the present day—from ancestral homelands to city life. She uses this awareness to continually redefine and reclaim her identity as a modern Indigenous woman and artist. Charley graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts in 2018.