Contemporary Native American woman artists working in abstraction

The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art (The Ringling) presents, Ancestral Edge: Abstraction and Symbolism in the Works of Nine Native American Women Artists, curated by Ola Wlusek, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. 

This exhibition brings together works by nine contemporary Native American artists making significant contributions to the field of abstraction, including Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa), Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc), Kiana Bell (Seminole), Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee [Creek]), Erica Lord (Iñupiaq/Athabascan), Sarah Sense (Chitimacha/Choctaw), Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos), Marie Watt (Seneca/German-Scot) and Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota). Ancestral Edge will be on view in the Keith D. Monda Gallery for Contemporary Art in the Museum of Art from September 13, 2025, to April 12, 2026. 

Explored in a variety of media—basket weaving, beadwork, collage, clay, textiles, photography, metalwork, and printmaking rooted in ancestral technologies—the works share similar stylistic and social concerns, such as vibrant colors, hard-edged geometries, curvilinear patterns, and bold mark-making, all infused with artists’ personal stories and those of their kin. 

“Native American art and craft traditions have long engaged with abstraction as a meaningful, complex visual language, woven into ancestral knowledge, ceremonial practice, and material culture,” Wlusek said. “Ancestral Edge celebrates the richness of Indigenous artistic traditions and reaffirms the central role that contemporary Native American art plays in shaping a more expansive, inclusive understanding of abstraction today. For these artists, abstraction is not merely an aesthetic strategy—it a long-standing practice to convey cultural, spiritual, and ceremonial meaning that predates modern art movements.” 

The exhibition also highlights recent acquisitions to the collection, including by Dyani White Hawk, whose work combines influences from European and American abstraction with abstract Lakota art forms to challenge the hierarchy of art history. The Ringling recently acquired two works by this celebrated artist: They Gifted (Day) (2024) and They Gifted (Night) (2024). According to White Hawk, these companion screen prints, “…based on Lakota symbology and abstract motifs associated with Lakota beadwork and quillwork, explore the potential to communicate the powerful concepts of balance and interconnectivity, including to one another, the land, and all forms of life.”  

Major lenders to the exhibition include the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation, the Gochman Family Collection, and the Rubell Museum in Miami, FL, and Washington, DC. Ancestral Edge: Abstraction and Symbolism in the Works of Nine Native American Women Artists exhibition and accompanying publication are generously supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art. Exhibition support is also provided by the Gulf Coast Community Foundation. The exhibition will be accompanied by a scholarly catalogue available in Fall 2025.  

Arist Biographies 

• Teresa Baker (Mandan/Hidatsa, b. 1985) is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes in Western North Dakota, and currently lives and works in Los Angeles, CA. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts and her BA from Fordham University. Through a mixed media practice combining artificial and natural materials, Baker creates abstracted landscapes that explore vast space and how we move, see, and explore within them. Baker’s materials, texture, shapes, and color relationships are guided by her Mandan/Hidatsa culture. Baker is a 2025 Guggenheim fellow, a 2022 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and the recipient of the 2020 Native American Fellowship for Visual Artists at the Ucross Foundation. teresabaker.com 
• Natalie Ball (Klamath/Modoc, b. 1980) was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She has a Bachelor’s degree with a double major in Indigenous, Race, & Ethnic Studies and Art from the University of Oregon and a Master’s from Massey University of New Zealand focused on Indigenous contemporary art and an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from the Yale School of Art. Ball has relocated to her ancestral Homelands in Southern Oregon/Northern California to raise her three children, and is now an elected official serving on the Klamath Tribal Council. She is the recipient of the 2023 United States Artist Fellowship, the 2023 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship, the Ford Family Foundation’s Hallie Ford Foundation Fellow 2020, the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant 2020, and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant 2019. natalieball.com 
• Kiana Bell (Seminole, b. 1998) is a mixed-media basket artist based in Hollywood, Florida. Born in Oklahoma, she is an enrolled member of the Seminole Tribe of Florida and is also affiliated with the Muscogee Creek, Cherokee, and Oglala Lakota Nations. Bell has been creating sweetgrass baskets for over seven years, drawing deeply from her cultural heritage and the natural landscapes of her community.  Bell’s work is included in the collection of the Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum on the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation, FL. ahtahthiki.com 
• Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee [Creek], b.1978) is an enrolled member of the Muscogee Nation and lives and works on the Muscogee Reservation. As an artist, musician, and curator whose work centers on Indigenous language revitalization, sovereignty, and futurism, she merges electronic music, dance, and visual art to honor and expand Indigenous traditions, becoming the first to incorporate the Cherokee language into contemporary music.  Her projects explore Indigenous histories and futures through sound, movement, and community-driven exchange. She has received awards from Creative Capital, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the Harpo Foundation, and the MId-America Arts Alliance. elisaharkins.org 
• Erica Lord (Iñupiaq/Athabascan, b. 1978) is an interdisciplinary artist who explores concepts and issues that exist within a contemporary Indigenous experience, including how culture and identity operate in a rapidly changing world. She draws on her experience of growing up between Alaska and Upper Michigan and her mixed-race cultural identity drawn from Athabascan, Iñupiaq, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, and English descent.  She is an enrolled member of Nenana Native Village, and she received her Bachelor of Arts from Carleton College and MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Most recently, Lord was named a 2024 Creative Capital Grant recipient. ericalord.com 
• Sarah Sense (Chitimacha/Choctaw, b. 1980) is an artist from Sacramento, California. She received a BFA from California State University, Chico and an MFA from Parsons School for Design, New York.  Sense has been practicing photo-weaving with traditional basket techniques from her Chitimacha and Choctaw family since 2004. While director and curator of the American Indian Community House Gallery, New York (2005-2007) Sense catalogued the gallery’s thirty-year history, inspiring her search for Indigenous art internationally. Her world travels were charged with archive research, photo-weaving project that expanded to community programming, international Indigenous artist interviews and a book, Weaving the Americas. Her most recent commissions for Florida State University (2021) and Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth (2022) are large wall weaving of maps and documents from the British Library archive. sarahsense.com 
• Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos, b. 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist from the Umpqua Valley on the South Coast of Oregon, working in painting, photography, printmaking, weaving, and large-scale installation. Her work combines the ceremonial traditions of her ancestors with contemporary modes and materials at the intersection of social and ecological justice, education, and Indigenous feminism. Siestreem holds a BS from Portland State University and an MFA from Pratt Institute. She was awarded the University of Oregon’s 2022-23 CFAR Fellowship and the 2022 Forge Project Fellowship. She created a self-sustaining weaving program for the Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians, and she lives and works in Portland, Oregon. 
• Marie Watt (Seneca/German-Scot, b. 1967) is an American artist. She is a member of the Seneca Nation of Indians (Turtle Clan) and also has German-Scot ancestry. Her interdisciplinary work draws from history, biography, Haudenosaunee protofeminism, and Indigenous teachings; in it, she explores the intersection of history, community, and storytelling.  Watt holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University. She has received fellowships and awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Anonymous Was a Woman, and the Seattle Art Museum’s Betty Bowen Award. mariewattstudio.com 
• Dyani White Hawk (Sičáŋǧu Lakota, b. 1976) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis. White Hawk earned an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her practice, strongly rooted in painting and beadwork, extends into sculpture, installation, video, and performance, reflecting upon cross-cultural experiences through the amalgamation of influences from Lakota and European and American abstraction. She has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, Creative Capital, Anonymous Was a Woman, Academy of Arts and Letters, United States Artists, Joan Mitchell Foundation, Jerome Foundation, McKnight Foundation and Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. dyaniwhitehawk.com