Indian Woman Sitting, 2005

“In Indian Woman Sitting, Red Star sits gracefully on the corner of a prop chair with her legs crossed at a soft diagonal toward the viewer—a posture frequently invoked in grand academic portraits of aristocratic women from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The pose grants an expansive view of the intricate designs and textures of Red Star’s dress, beaded leggings, and fringed shawl, however, what seems like open access to the artist’s world is quickly rejected by Red Star’s removed expression and turned head. She stares beyond the frame in a bored solemnity, as if impatient for the exercise to end and the artificial set to be broken down." —Jordan Amirkhani Aperture is pleased to release this special limited-edition photograph by Apsáalooke/Crow artist Wendy Red Star on the occasion of the publication of the artist’s first comprehensive monograph, Delegation. Red Star uses photography to recast historical narratives with wit, candor, and a feminist, Indigenous perspective. This work, from the series Indian Woman, is an early self-portrait, which the artist uses to acknowledge and complicate the power dynamics of Native and European culture. Red Star centers Native American life and material culture through imaginative self-portraiture, vivid collages, archival interventions, and site-specific installations. She is constantly questioning the role of the photographer in shaping Indigenous representation.

Pigment Print
Image Size: 20 x 30 inches
Paper Size: 21 x 31 inches
Edition: 20 and 5 AP
Signed and numbered by the artist

Price to increase as the edition sells through.

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.