Eyes On

Eyes On: Julie Buffalohead features new work by the Minnesota-based artist, who is a citizen of the Ponca Tribe of Oklahoma. Buffalohead uses metaphors, iconography, and storytelling narratives in her artwork to describe emotional and subversive American Indian cultural experiences, and often analyzes the commercialization of American Indian cultures.

Buffalohead frequently includes animals as subjects, and her eclectic palette and whimsical subjects evoke a childlike innocence. While she works in a variety of mediums, including painting, printmaking, drawing, illustration, bookmaking, and sculpture, this exhibition will feature a new series of works on canvas that explore her own life experiences, as well as ancestral knowledge.

Buffalohead’s work has been included in exhibitions at the National Museum of the American Indian—New York, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, the Eiteljorg Museum, and the Bockley Gallery in Minneapolis.

This exhibition has a thematic relationship to Eyes On: Shimabuku, as well as Stampede: Animals in Art. Although the visuals and artistic media are vastly different, Buffalohead and Shimabuku use the depiction of animals as a vehicle to explore both familiar and unfamiliar narratives related to their personal heritage and the world around them.

Eyes On: Julie Buffalohead is half of a two-part presentation with Eyes On: Shimabuku, organized by the DAM’s Native Arts and Modern and Contemporary Art departments. Eyes On: Julie Buffalohead is curated by John Lukavic, Curator of Native arts, and Denene De Quintal, Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in American Indian Art.