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Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit and Unangax, b. 1979)Unshadowed Land Nicholas Galanin’s exhibition, Dreaming in English, is on view at the Van Every/Smith Galleries through December 9, 2021. Over the past two decades, Galanin has worked across media, materials, and processes, engaging past, present, and future to expose widespread misappropriation and commodification of Indigenous visual culture, the impact of colonialism, intentionally obscured collective memory, and barriers to the acquisition of knowledge. His practice, encompassing sculpture, installation, photography, video, performance, printmaking and textile-based works, unites traditional and contemporary processes and materials to reclaim narrative and creative agency, and contribute to the continuum of Tlingit...

Peter Doig (Scottish, b. 1959)Masquerades, 2006Giclee print on Somerset velvet enhanced 22528.75 x 24 x 1.5 inGift of Charlotte and Alan Artus Peter Doig’s magical realist composition, Masquerades, is simultaneously charming and unsettling, making it difficult to look away. What appears at first glance to be a joyous moment shared between a bride and her groom quickly becomes tainted with eeriness as the composition imparts a ghostly overtone. The vibrant background is muted by the composition’s wash, allowing the central figures to dominate the foreground. The couple is in motion, perhaps walking towards the masquerade for which they are dressed and costumed....

Nicholas Galanin did not begin his talk at Davidson College with esoteric and abstract metaphors, but rather with a collection of photographs from his life in his hometown of Sitka, Alaska — images of fishing, various projects he’s working on, like a dugout canoe he is carving with his uncle and cousin, the community, and wildlife. By beginning with these pictures, he underscored how one’s practice of art exists in the everyday and is tied to our connection to the earth: a profound reminder. Galanin, a Tlingit and Unangax Indigenous artist, creates art that pulls from both contemporary Western art...