Tanya Lukin Linklater

Tanya Lukin Linklater is a multidisciplinary Indigenous artist. Her Sugpiaq homelands are in the Kodiak archipelago of Alaska, and she lives in Nbisiing Anishinaabeg territory in Ontario, Canada. Lukin Linklater’s work traces the expansive ways Indigenous knowledges, histories, and structures have been embodied and sustained, and in turn, highlights the complexities of their presence in institutional settings.

Building on her iterative body of work My mind is with the weather, her two-year Artist Residency Award supported the creation of new sculptures and in-gallery performances in the form of open rehearsals. Works supported by her residency also include a multiwork project informed by a visit to Hopewell Ceremonial Earthworks in Newark, Ohio. All of these feature in Lukin Linklater's solo exhibition at the Wex entitled Inner blades of grass (soft) inner blades of grass (cured) inner blades of grass (bruised by the weather), on view June 1–August 21, 2024.

The exhibition’s opening and closing moments were marked by a series of improvisational open rehearsals with dance artists in the galleries. The rehearsals, titled Scrape soak steam pour crack sew bend brace. and developed during the residency, responded to the Wex-commissioned Structure of Sustenance Three, a triangular sculpture that resembles a caguyaq, or Sugpiaq bentwood hunting hat. 

Lukin Linklater’s exhibition at the Wex was organized by Kelly Kivland, former head of exhibitions at the Wexner Center for the Arts and director and lead curator of the art program at Michigan Central, with support from Curatorial Assistant Jonathan Gonzalez. 

Pictured above: Tanya Lukin Linklater
Photo by Liz Lott