Denver Art Museum to Present "Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Lugar"

Organized by the DAM, museum to premiere first exhibition exploring side by side the collaborative artmaking processes of two leading Indigenous contemporary artists

Denver—Aug. 18, 2020—The Denver Art Museum (DAM) today announced Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, the first exhibition to present together the work of Watt and Luger, two leading Indigenous contemporary artists whose processes both focus on collaborative artmaking. Exploring the collective process of creation, Each/Other will feature 24 mixed media sculptures, wall hangings and large-scale installation works by Marie Watt (Seneca and German-Scots) and Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota and European), along with a new monumental artist-guided community artwork. While each artist’s practice is rooted in collaboration, they have never before worked together or been exhibited alongside one another in a way that allows audiences to see both the similarities and contrasts in their work. Curated by John P. Lukavic, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts at the DAM, this exhibition will be on view from May 23, 2021,through Aug. 22, 2021, in the Gallagher Gallery on Level 1 of the DAM’s Hamilton Building.

“We are honored to serve as a platform for the incredible work of Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, and to bring their collaborative approach to artistic creation to our community,” said Christoph Heinrich, Frederick and Jan Mayer Director of the DAM. “This exhibition underscores the museum’s ongoing commitment to supporting, presenting and collecting contemporary artists from the Indigenous community and around the world. Next year’s project with Watt and Luger offers the unique opportunity for us to invite the public to participate in the creative artmaking process and display the resulting work for all visitors to experience.”

Marie Watt (Seneca), Butterfly, 2015. Reclaimed wool blankets, satin binding, thread, cotton twill tape and tin jingle

Marie Watt (Seneca), Butterfly, 2015. Reclaimed wool blankets, satin binding, thread, cotton twill tape and tin jingles; 94 x 126 in. Denver Art Museum: Funds from Loren G. Lipson, M.D., Vicki & Kent Logan, with additional funds from Brian Tschumper, Nancy Benson, Jan & Mike Tansey, and JoAnn & Bob Balzer, 2016.1A-B. © Marie Watt.

Watt’s work draws primarily from history, biography, Iroquois proto-feminism and Indigenous principles, often addressing the interaction of the arc of history with the intimacy of memory. Based in Portland, Oregon, Watt was a Native Arts Artist-in-Residence participant at the DAM in 2013. Butterfly, a large-scale and visitor favorite artwork by Watt, was acquired by the DAM in 2015 and will be on view in Each/Other. Her primary materials are often everyday objects that can carry extraordinary histories of use, such as blankets, which in her tribe (Watt is an enrolled citizen of the Seneca Nation) are given to those who bear witness to important life events. In working with blankets, her process is both solitary and collaborative; her small works are often personal meditations and her larger works are made in the community, notably in “sewing circles,” public events in which the fellowship and storytelling that takes place can be more important than the resulting object.

Cannupa Hanska Luger, Every One

Cannupa Hanska Luger, Every One, 2018. Ceramic, social collaboration; 12 x 15 x 3 ft. Photo courtesy of UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, CO.

Luger is a New Mexico-based, multi-disciplinary artist. Using social collaboration in response to timely and site specific topics, Luger produces multi-pronged projects that take many forms. Through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel and repurposed materials, Luger interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about 21st century Indigeneity. Nature, acquired by the DAM in 2015, along with other recent notable works by Luger will be on view in Each/Other, including a monumental sculptural installation from 2018 titled Every One. Created by people from hundreds of communities across the U.S. and Canada, this socially collaborative work is composed of over 4,000 individual handmade clay beads—each one representing a person who has been lost—and aims to re-humanize the data of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, queer and trans community members.

“Collaboration and the creative process are central to this exhibition and each of the artists’ work,” says curator Lukavic. “In today’s society, value is placed primarily on the noun ‘art’ and not the verb form, or act of creating. Together, Watt and Luger show us the ways in which art moves beyond the end-product, beyond a static or luxury item, to become the very process of creation itself— unbound and limitless. Foundationally, collaboration is such an important element to each artist, but each in their own different ways. Each/Other not only presents the results of Watt and Luger’s past collaborative projects, but invites us to be a part of the artists’ creative processes, and through that experience, to become aware of the world outside of our immediate and limited vision— recognizing that we are part of something greater and larger than ourselves. It is an important notion, especially in these times.”

Marie Watt, Skywalker/Skyscraper (Babel)

Marie Watt, Skywalker/Skyscraper (Babel), 2012. Steel I-beam, reclaimed wool blankets; 96 x 20 x 22 in. Private collection.

The artists, along with the DAM, will soon distribute a video invitation that includes a call for community participation and instructions for how individuals can contribute. The public, with no limit on geographic location, will be invited to add to the work by physically sending what they create to the artists. Through this collaboration, it is the artists’ hope that participants discover something new about themselves, their neighbors, and the world around them, while leading to a greater sense of understanding between people. The artists will combine the sourced submissions into a work that will be on display in Each/Other. Join the conversation and be part of the exhibition before it opens on Twitter and Instagram with #EachOtheratDAM.

Each/Other will present the work of Watt and Luger divided into two sections that explore the artists’ engagement with community, materials and the land. The new collaborative piece will be located where the two artists’ works converge within the gallery. Works on view in Each/Other will consist of materials including carved wood, ceramic and fabric sculpture, photography, installation works with coconcertina and oil drums, video based interpretive elements and documentation pieces to show past performance works by the artists.

Following its presentation at the DAM, Each/Other will travel to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University Sept. 25, 2021 through Dec. 12, 2021 and to the Peabody Essex Museum Jan. 29, 2022 through May 8, 2022. An illustrated color catalog will accompany the exhibition and include essays by exhibition curator John P. Lukavic and Jami Powell (Osage Nation), Associate Curator of Native American Art at the Hood Museum, Dartmouth, with an in- depth edited interview with the artists by Namita Gupta Wiggers, Director of the Master of Art in Critical Craft Studies at Warren Wilson College. The catalog, designed by Chindo Nkenke-Smith, will tell a complex and nuanced story of Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger’s work while extending the themes explored in the exhibition.

Designed by local firm Ramble Creative, this exhibition will be included in general admission, which is free for museum members and youth 18 and under every day. For the latest updates on visitation, safety and cleaning procedures, please visit denverartmuseum.org.

Exhibition and Sponsors

Each/Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger is organized by the Denver Art Museum. It is presented with the generous support of Vicki and Kent Logan, the National Endowment for the Arts, The Robert Lehman Foundation, the Adolph Coors Exhibition Endowment Fund, the donors to the Annual Fund Leadership Campaign, Stelo, Native Arts and Culture Foundation, Osage Nation Foundation, and the residents who support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD). Promotional support is provided by 5280 Magazine and CBS4.

Media Resources

About Marie Watt

Watt (b. 1967) is an America artist and citizen of the Seneca Nation based in Portland, OR whose practice explores multiple materials and the collaborative act of artmaking. Her artworks are held in the collections across the U.S. and Canada, including the Denver Art Museum, the Seattle Art Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Yale University Art Gallery, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, National Gallery of Canada, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian and Renwick Gallery, the Tacoma Art Museum, the Fabric Workshop and Museum, the Portland Art Museum and the Library of Congress.

Watt has received public art commissions from the Tacoma Art Museum, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Denver Art Museum and the United States Embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan, through the U.S. State Department’s Art in Embassies program.

Watt’s work is featured in the 2019-20 exhibitions Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019 at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Place, Nations, Generations, Beings: 200 Years of Indigenous North American Art at Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT; Echoes and Reverberations at theFabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, PA; and Settlement, a Native American-led cyber activation of Plymouth, U.K. led by artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and Plymouth-based collective The Conscious Sisters.

Watt exhibits internationally and is represented in Portland, Oregon by PDX Contemporary Art, in Seattle, Washington by Greg Kucera Gallery, and in New York by Marc Straus Gallery.

Watt holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University, attended Willamette University and the Institute of American Indian Arts, and in 2016 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Willamette University.

About Cannupa Hanska Lugar

Luger (b. 1979) is a New Mexico-based interdisciplinary artist whose community-oriented artworks address environmental justice and gender violence issues. A citizen of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, Luger was born on the Standing Rock reservation in Fort Yates, North Dakota. Luger is the recipient of the Museum of Arts and Design’s 2018 Burke Prize, the inaugural award celebrating “highly accomplished work, strong use of materials, innovative processes, and conceptual rigor and relevance,” and The Wall Street Journal named Cannupa Hanska Luger as Santa Fe, New Mexico’s Local Hero for America’s Art Scene in 2018.

Luger has exhibited internationally including venues such as Princeton University Art Museum, Washington Project for the Arts, Art Mûr in Montreal, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, OrendaGallery in Paris, Autry Museum of the American West and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta, among others. He lectures, participates in residencies and large scale projects around the globe and his work is collected internationally. Luger holds a BFA in studio arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is represented by Garth Greenan Gallery in New York.

About the Denver Art Museum

The Denver Art Museum is an educational, nonprofit resource that sparks creative thinking and expression through transformative experiences with art. Its holdings reflect the city and region—and provide invaluable ways for the community to learn about cultures from around the world. Metro residents support the Scientific and Cultural Facilities District (SCFD), a unique funding source serving hundreds of metro Denver arts, culture and scientific organizations. For museum information, call 720-865-5000 or visit www.denverartmuseum.org.

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Image Credit Lines

  • Image 1: Marie Watt (Seneca), Butterfly, 2015. Reclaimed wool blankets, satin binding, thread, cotton twill tape and tin jingles; 94 x 126 in. Denver Art Museum: Funds from Loren G. Lipson, M.D., Vicki & Kent Logan, with additional funds from Brian Tschumper, Nancy Benson, Jan & Mike Tansey, and JoAnn & Bob Balzer, 2016.1A-B. © Marie Watt.
  • Image 2: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Every One, 2018. Ceramic, social collaboration; 12 x 15 x 3 ft. Photo courtesy of UCCS Galleries of Contemporary Art, Colorado Springs, CO.
  • Image 3: Marie Watt, Skywalker/Skyscraper (Babel), 2012. Steel I-beam, reclaimed wool blankets; 96 x 20 x 22 in. Private collection