Inside the “Native America” Issue with Wendy Red Star and Natalie Diaz

In a series of public programs that accompany the fall issue of Aperture magazine, “Native America,” photographers, historians, and writers discuss the historical relationships between and new perspectives on photography and Native representation.

Join us for the first discussion in this series as we take a look inside the issue with guest editor Wendy Red Star and poet Natalie Diaz. “Native America” considers the wide-ranging work of photographers and lens-based artists who pose challenging questions about land rights, identity and heritage, and histories of colonialism. Red Star and Diaz will delve into the various topics, artists, and takeaways in the issue and discuss their own relationships to its contents.

Wendy Red Star (born in Billings, Montana, 1981) is a Portland, Oregon–based artist raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation. Her work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance. An avid researcher of archives and historical narratives, Red Star seeks to recast her research, offering new and unexpected perspectives in work that is at once inquisitive, witty, and unsettling. Red Star holds a BFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, and an MFA in sculpture from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Natalie Diaz is a Mojave poet based in Phoenix and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Tribe. Her books include When My Brother Was an Aztec (2012) and Postcolonial Love Poem (2020). She has received fellowships from the MacArthur Foundation, Lannan Foundation, United States Artists, and Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Diaz is director of the Center for Imagination in the Borderlands, and the Maxine and Jonathan Marshall Chair in Modern and Contemporary Poetry at Arizona State University, Tempe.

Lead support of the “Native America” issue of Aperture magazine is provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Henry Luce Foundation. Further generous support is provided by the Phillip and Edith Leonian Foundation and the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

Significant support of Aperture magazine is provided by The Kanakia Foundation. Additional lead support is provided by Jon Stryker and Slobodan Randjelović.