Zuccaire Gallery Exhibit Explores Power of Indigenous Language in Contemporary Art

"Weaving Words, Weaving Worlds: The Power of Indigenous Language in Contemporary Art" is a group exhibition that features 24 artists, including Jeffrey Gibson, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Kay WalkingStick. Work in traditional and new media explore how art can become a vessel for cultural continuity, storytelling and the reclamation of Indigenous languages.

Kay Walkingstick, Nez Perce Crossing, 2008. © Kay Walkingstick. Tia Collection. James Hart Photography.

The exhibition is on view July 17 through November 22 at the Paul W. Zuccaire Gallery in the Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University.

"Weaving Words, Weaving Worlds explores the profound connections between Indigenous language and contemporary art, centering artists' work engaging with Algonquian languages spoken across Long Island and the Northeast," said Jeremy Dennis, guest curator, Shinnecock Indian Nation. "Drawing from heritage, memory, and community, these artists use creative expression to revitalize and reclaim language as a tool for cultural continuity, storytelling, and healing. While the exhibition uplifts the resilience of Indigenous language, it also acknowledges a history shaped by violence and silence-from weaving early colonial efforts to control and document language, to the trauma inflicted by boarding schools that punished children for speaking their own languages. It further holds space for those who were forcibly silenced, including missing and murdered Indigenous women, whose stories and voices remain essential to any conversation about cultural survival."

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, I See Red: In Your Dreams, 1995, mixed media on canvas, 72 x 72", Private Collection of Timothy Clare Headington. Image © Estate of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. Image courtesy of the Estate of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.

Also featured in the exhibition are archival materials from Stony Brook University's Special Collections, which provide vital historical context, illuminating the enduring presence of Indigenous peoples and languages on Long Island. Highlights include the Native Long Island map by the Suffolk County Archaeological Association, which features more than 400 Algonquian words and cultural references. These early maps, place-name studies and historical documents underscore the exhibition's themes of language reclamation, cultural continuity and the resilience of Indigenous knowledge.

Accompanying the exhibition is a 42-page catalog featuring artist images and statements by all 24 artists of the exhibition, a curatorial statement and text about the Algonquian Language Revitalization Project and Native American and Indigenous Studies at Stony Brook University. Exhibition photographs and archival materials from Special Collections are also featured.

Visit the Zuccaire Gallery website for more information, including hours and other events related to this exhibition.