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Allison Akootchook
Warden

Allison Akootchook Warden
Multidisciplinary Artist and Performer
Anchorage, AK
2019 USA Fellow

This award was generously supported by the Rasmuson Foundation.
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Allison Akootchook Warden is an Iñupiaq traditional artist who activates her Iñupiaq worldview through installation, music, performance art, visual art, creative writing, and dance. Warden is a tribal member of the Native Village of Kaktovik, and lives in Anchorage, Alaska. In 2018, she received a Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship in the field of New Genre, a Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship in the field of Music, and a Western Arts Alliance Native Launchpad Fellowship in the field of Music.

Warden is currently working on Everybody Will Be a Millionaire!, an installation of photography, objects, and video created by “you copy?”, the collaborative team of Iñupiaq artists Brian Adams and Allison Akootchook Warden. The exhibit includes a series of staged photographs in which modern Iñupiaq are photographed wearing regalia from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Conversely, people from the above countries are photographed wearing Iñupiaq regalia, recreating photographs of Alaska and UAE leaders and locals from 1971, a year when the UAE was formed and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was signed by Congress. Warden recently performed rap as part of an International Circumpolar Hip-Hop Collaboration at the Riddu Riđđu Festivála in Mandalen, Norway in 2018 and is working on an album entirely in her Iñupiaq language.

Portrait photo courtesy artist.

allisonwarden.com
  • Artwork by Allison Akootchook Warden
    Unipkaaġusiksuġuvik (the place of the future/ancient), 2016. Still image from social practice performative installation at the Anchorage Museum. Photo by Michael Conti.
  • Artwork by Allison Akootchook Warden
    Ancestor from the Future, 2017. Regalia. Co-created at Djerassi Resident Artist Program with installation artist Christy Chow. Photo by Christy Chow.
  • Artwork by Allison Akootchook Warden
    siku/siku, 2018. Still of performance art piece. Leonard and Bina Art Gallery, Montreal, Quebec. Photo by Yasmine Tremblay.
  • Artwork by Allison Akootchook Warden
    we still remember the long long long ago, 2016. Ivory, neon green 3D printing filament. Printed at the Anchorage Museum.
Artwork by Allison Akootchook Warden Artwork by Allison Akootchook Warden Artwork by Allison Akootchook Warden Artwork by Allison Akootchook Warden