Growing up in Montana on the Apsáalooke/Crow Reservation, Wendy Red Star was surrounded by the rich creativity and artistry that is ingrained in Indigenous culture. She just didn’t realize it.
“I didn’t really consider what my community was doing as art,” Red Star said in an interview Tuesday. “In a Crow sense, art is a Western term.”
In the Indigenous community where Red Star was raised, art is viewed as an integral part of the self. Her Apsáalooke name, Baahinnaachísh or Baaeétitchish, which translates to “One Who Is Talented,” connects her to this artistic identity — a name she inherited from her grand-uncle, Clive Francis Dust Sr.
“I think the reason why my art is so connected to my identity — there can’t be one without the other — is because of that cultural background,” Red Star said.
Her upbringing and strong sense of identity, tied to her visual artistry, has set the foundation for her work, which has spanned two decades and recently received national recognition. Red Star, who lives and works in Portland, is one of 22 recipients of the 2024 MacArthur Fellowship, a prestigious “genius grant” that awards each recipient $800,000 over the course of five years.
Red Star described the award, announced last week, as a tremendous honor, placing her in the same company as 1994 MacArthur Fellow Janine Pease, a Crow woman who founded Little Big Horn College in Montana and has been an advocate for Indigenous people in the region.
“I think what’s really beautiful is that it’s other people vouching for you,” Red Star said about the behind-the-scenes decision process. “That’s actually what I think feels the best about this reward. It’s the people that I’ve worked with, different curators, different artists, who have vouched for me and written letters for me — all with me not knowing that this was happening.”
During her time as an artist, Red Star has exhibited around the world and been featured in over 60 public collections, including at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris and the British Museum in London.
“Alaxchiiaahush/Many War Achievements/Plenty Coups,” created in 2014, is an artist-manipulated digitally reproduced photograph by Charles Milton Bell, National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution. Photo courtesy of Wendy Red Star.Charles Milton Bell, Wendy Red Star
Working in a blend of media including sculpture, photography and collage, Red Star’s work is inspired by her Apsáalooke/Crow heritage and Western narratives about Indigenous people. Since 2004, her work has evolved to include more research and engagement with historical artifacts.
“As a kid, I was drawing things about Crow culture,” Red Star said. “I kind of joke with myself that I’ve actually just been making the same art the entire time, but I think the way that it’s evolved and it has become so exciting and engaging for me is working in archives and collections.”
Much of her work challenges Indigenous stereotypes or adds detail to objects and archival photographs through collage work. By combining images of Apsáalooke objects, such as beaded bags and regalia, with old photographs and annotations, Red Star adds context and detail to each piece she incorporates into her art.
“I’m really interested in the sort of history, and the story behind certain events in time,” Red Star said. “To me, they couldn’t just be captured in one specific medium.”
One of Red Star’s current exhibits at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton incorporates archival materials in a series of lithographs — art pieces created through a printmaking process — in cooperation with Judith Baumann, a printer.
A lithograph from Red Star’s series with the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton, titled “Her Dreams Are True (Julia Bad Boy),” created in 2021. Photo courtesy of Wendy Red Star.Nika Blasser
“The fact that she is engaging with these material cultural records in order to kind of disentangle these stories and recreate and reinvigorate new ones, I think that feels really exciting to people,” said Carmen Petit, marketing and gallery manager at Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts. “There’s something so tangible and evocative and visceral about that that people can really grasp onto.”
Red Star has completed four residencies at the institute dating back to 2010. Her most recent was in 2023.
“The work that she’s made every single time has not only come to fruition and been completed, but it’s also been really conceptually and visually super strong,” Petit said about her residencies “I think it has felt really successful, both for the organization and for herself.”
From the outside, Petit described Red Star as “an artist who is incredibly dedicated to the practice,” and said the honor of a MacArthur Fellowship was long overdue.
“Being awarded with the recognition of her labor that she’s been putting into these projects for so long, I think it’s not only warranted, but it could have come five years ago,” Petit said.
Red Star’s art also includes photography, self-portraits, sculpture and installations. The choice of medium is determined by the message she wants to convey to the public, said Red Star.
“The Last Thanks,” created in 2006, depicts Red Star in the center of a table spread with a Thanksgiving feast, surrounded by plastic skeletons in feathered headdresses, a reference to Indigenous stereotypes. Photo courtesy of Wendy Red Star.Wendy Red Star
As a student, Red Star discovered art as a valuable gift and a means of contribution, especially after encountering challenges with traditional learning methods.
“This is my contribution of how I’m absorbing that information and then how I am conveying it to other people,” Red Star said about some of her early art projects. “It’s all about actually learning and educating myself, first and foremost, and then sort of contextualizing that through visual means.”
Red Star plans to continue creating visual artwork with the support of the grant money including an upcoming show at the National Portrait Gallery, a part of the Smithsonian Institution, in Washington, D.C., in 2026
“As a self-employed artist since 2016, to know that I’ll have stability for five years is really wonderful,” said Red Star.
You can see her work currently on display in Oregon at the Portland Art Museum and the Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts in Pendleton.
— Chiara Profenna covers religion, faith and cultural connections. Reach her at 503-221-4327; cprofenna@oregonian.com or @chiara_profenna
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