Inside “Delegation” with Wendy Red Star and Karl Davis

Join Aperture and Oregon Contemporary for a conversation between Apsáalooke (Crow) artist Wendy Red Star and Karl Davis, executive director of Crow’s Shadow Institute of The Arts, celebrating the launch of Red Star’s book  Delegation (Aperture, 2022).

Red Star’s photography recasts historical narratives with wit, candor, and a feminist, Indigenous perspective, centering Native American life and material culture through imaginative self-portraiture, vivid collages, archival interventions, and site-specific installations. Whether referencing nineteenth-century Crow leaders or 1980s pulp fiction, museum collections or family pictures, Red Star’s practice questions the role of the photographer in shaping Indigenous representation.

Including a dynamic array of Red Star’s lens-based works from 2006 to the present and a range of essays, stories, and poems by award-winning historians and writers, Delegation—a copublication with Documentary Arts—is a spirited testament to an influential artist’s singular vision. It builds upon the success of Aperture magazine’s Fall 2020 issue, “Native America,” and the traveling exhibition Native America: In Translation, curated by Red Star.

Event Location:
Oregon Center for Contemporary Art
8371 North Interstate Avenue
Portland, Oregon 97217

Following the discussion, Red Star will be signing copies of her book.

Wendy Red Star (born in Billings, Montana, 1981) is an Apsáalooke artist based in Portland, Oregon. Her work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions and is in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art, New York; Brooklyn Museum; Saint Louis Art Museum; MASS MoCA, North Adams, Massachusetts; and the British Museum, London. Red Star was the guest editor of Aperture magazine’s Fall 2020 issue, “Native America,” and is the recipient of a 2022 Emerson Collective Fellowship.

Karl Davis was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and currently is the executive director of Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton. He holds an MA from University of Alberta and BA from Portland State University, both in art history. Davis has led a number of different arts organizations throughout his career, including coordinator of the Littman/White Galleries at PSU, Director of Froelick Gallery in downtown Portland, and President of the Art and Design Graduate Student Association at the University of Alberta.

This event is presented in partnership with Oregon Contemporary.

Image caption: Wendy Red Star, Her Dreams Are True (Julia Bad Boy), 2021; from Wendy Red Star: Delegation (Aperture, 2022). © Wendy Red Star, Courtesy of Crow’s Shadow, Nika Blasser