Cannupa
Hanska Luger

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a New Mexico–based multidisciplinary artist who uses social collaboration in response to timely and site-specific issues. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota, and European descent. He produces multipronged projects that take many forms. Through monumental installations that incorporate ceramics, video, sound, fiber, steel, and repurposed materials, he interweaves performance and political action to communicate stories about twenty-first-century Indigeneity. This work provokes diverse audiences to engage with Indigenous peoples and values apart from the lens of colonial social structuring and often presents a call to action to protect land from capitalist exploits. Luger combines critical cultural analysis with dedication to and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages.

He is a 2020 Creative Capital Fellow, a 2020 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow, and the recipient of the Center for Craft’s inaugural Craft Research Fund Artist Fellowship (2020), a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters & Sculptors Grant (2019), and the Museum of Arts and Design’s inaugural Burke Prize (2018). He has exhibited internationally at venues such as the Gardiner Museum in Toronto, Art Mûr in Quebec, Kunsthal KAdE in Amersfoort, Netherlands, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR, and the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta. He lectures and participates in residencies and large-scale projects around the globe, and his work is in many public collections. Luger holds a BFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts and is represented by Garth Greenan Gallery in New York.

Portrait photo courtesy of the artist.