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Dyani White Hawk in “Between Worlds”
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Surrounded by friends and family working in her Minneapolis studio, one of today’s most acclaimed artists, Dyani White Hawk, finds continuities and commonalities between Indigenous and European abstraction, creating paintings and sculptures that incorporate elements of Lakota beadwork and porcupine quillwork alongside the aesthetics of European easel painting and Modernist abstraction. Across years of artistic practice, White Hawk’s work has grown in scale and ambition, completing monumental works comprising hundreds of thousands of glass beads, a 30-foot-long tile mosaic, and countless works of sculpture, painting, and video. This documentary short captures this moment of growth and possibility in the artist’s career, revisiting the places where her practice began, like the Santa Fe Indian Art Market, and following her to institutions like the Whitney Museum of American Art, where her work calls for a deeper reflection on the erasures and absences in the story of American art. “It’s not two worlds,” says White Hawk, “We may have multiple cultural influences, but we are all sharing one common world, and hopefully making efforts to learn how to collectively do that better.”
Credits
Directors: Bryan Chang, Travis Wood. Executive Producer: Tina Kukielski. Series Producer: Nick Ravich. Producers: Zeshawn Ali, Bryan Chang. Editor: Zara Serabian-Arthur. Director of Photography: Eric Phillips-Horst. Associate Producer: Andrea Chung. Associate Curator: Jurrell Lewis. Design & Animation: Momentist, Inc. Composer: Andrew Orkin.
Production Services: Meerkat Media. Additional Cinematography: Dallas Currie, John Grove, Michael Hennings. Location Sound: Bryan Chang, Johnny Hagen.
Additional Art21 Staff: Makda Amdetsyon, Lauren Barnett, Hannah DeGarmo, Lolita Fierro, Ian Forster, Grace LeCates, Emma Nordin, Jessica Svenson, Noor Tamari, Nora Wimmer.
Finishing Services: Skyline Finishing. Colorist: Stewart Griffin. Online Editor: Ben Kiviat. Re-Recording Mixer & Dialogue Editor: Annie Medlin. Sound Effects Editor: Mike Frank. Finishing Producer: Wendi Litteral. Additional Finishing Services: Cut + Measure. Additional Finishing Producers: Mary Grace Duffy, Alex Laviola. Audio Description & Captions: Sasha Hecht, Andre Kelman. Quality Control: Adam Stout. Narration: Louise Eliasof. Additional Music: Trey Toy. Additional Video Editor: Regina Spurlock. Assistant Editors: Stephanie Cen, Tristan Daley, Michelle Hanks.
Artwork Courtesy: Dyani White Hawk, Bockley Gallery.
Legal Counsel: Donaldson Callif Perez.
Interns: Candice Cirilo, Emma Kanne, Billie Lam, Asante Marie Owusu-Brafi, Aarya Silwal, Maria Syville, Emilia Copeland Titus.
Special Thanks: The Art21 Board of Trustees, Amber-Dawn Bear Robe, Sara Tonko, Darienne Turner.
Filming Locations Provided By: The Armory Show, Baltimore Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum, Joslyn Art Museum, Southwestern Association for Indian Arts.
Series Created By: Susan Dowling and Susan Sollins.
Original Production Funding Provided By: The Anna-Maria and Stephen Kellen Foundation, Lambent Foundation, Agnes Gund, Melony and Adam Lewis, National Endowment for the Arts, Teiger Foundation, Sarah Arison, The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Dealer Tire, Arts, Equity, & Education Fund™,The Horace W. Goldsmith Foundation, Elyse and Lawrence B. Benenson, Stephanie and Tim Ingrassia, Tim and Lauren Schrager Family Foundation.
This Program is a Production of Art21, Inc. Which is Solely Responsible for Its Content. ©2025 Art21, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
© 2025 Art21, Inc.
Closed captionsAvailable in English, German, Romanian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Italian
Through the Art21 Translation Project, multilingual audiences from around the globe can contribute translations, making Art21 films more accessible worldwide.
Interested in showing this film in an exhibition or public screening? To license this video please visit Licensing & Reproduction.
Dyani White Hawk was born in 1976 in Madison, Wisconsin, and currently lives and works in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She received her Associate in Arts Degree from the Haskell Indian Nations University, her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts, and her Master’s in Fine Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Across varied media, including painting, beadwork, mosaic, video, and performance, White Hawk brings attention to the traditions, techniques, and aesthetics of Lakota art practices, celebrating their beauty and conceptual rigor and placing them in the lineage of Western abstraction.
“It’s not two worlds. We may have multiple cultural influences, but we are all sharing one common world, and hopefully making efforts to learn how to collectively do that better.”
Dyani White Hawk
