Natani Notah is an artist and a proud member of the Navajo Nation. Her current art practice explores contemporary Native American existence through the lens of Indigenous Feminism. Notah has exhibited her work at institutions, such as DOCUMENT Chicago, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), Marin Museum of Contemporary Art (Marin MOCA), Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art, Tucson Desert Art Museum, Longmont Museum, apexart NYC, and elsewhere. Notah has received awards from Art Matters, International Sculpture Center, and the San Francisco Foundation. Her work has appeared in Artforum, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Forbes, and Sculpture Magazine and she has completed artist residencies at the Studios at MASS MoCA, Santa Fe Art Institute, Vermont Studio Center, and Grounds for Sculpture. Additionally she has successfully completed artist fellowships with the Headlands Center for the Arts, Kala Art Institute, and the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Notah holds a BFA with a minor in Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Cornell University and an MFA from Stanford University.
Photograph by Melissa Lukenbaugh for the Tulsa Artist Fellowship. Cover image courtesy of DOCUMENT.
Current Fellowship:
Lunder Institute for American Art Fellowship, Colby College Museum of Art (Summer 2024- Spring 2025)
Recent:
Visiting Artist, University of Washington, School of Art + Art History + Design, Seattle, WA (Oct 28–30, 2024)
The Brooklyn Rail’s New Social Environment, Is It Real? Contemporary Artists Address Reproductive Freedom, Curators Emily Edwards and Sara Hignite, artists Sarah Jené, Natani Notah, Viva Ruiz, and Aliza Shvarts, join artist and Rail contributor Gaby Collins-Fernandez for a conversation (Oct 24, 2024)
Is It Real? Contemporary Artists Address Reproductive Freedom, curated by Sarah Hignite & Emily Edwards, Lagoon Studio, Dallas, TX (Oct 5–25, 2024)
In an effort to be held, curated by Allison Glenn, The Shepherd, Detroit, MI (Aug 3– Oct 12, 2024)
Cosmic Disco, a collaborative exhibition project featuring works by Natani Notah, John Opera, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Kazuhito Tanaka, Pedro Vaz, DOCUMENT and Mrs., 60-40 56th Drive, Queens, NY 11378 (July 11–August 16, 2024)
Visiting Artist, Pacific Northwest College of Art, Willamette University, Portland, OR (July 23–July 26, 2024)
Natani Notah: Skirmishhh, TUREEN, Dallas, TX (May 25- July 6, 2024)
Tulsa Artist Fellowship (2021-2023), Alumni in Residence (Spring 2024)
Visiting Artist, Oklahoma State University (OSU) Art Department, Stillwater, OK (April 22–April 24, 2024)
EXPO Chicago 2024, with DOCUMENT (April 11- 14, 2024)
We Have Arrived, as part of Sovereign Futures, Territory Indigenous Art, Tulsa, OK (April 4- 7, 2024)
DALLAS Art Fair 2024 with TUREEN (Dallas, TX, April 4- 7, 2024)
FELIX Art Fair 2024, Los Angeles, CA with DOCUMENT (Feb 28- Mar 3, 2024)
Natani Notah: Thoughts on Being Thrown, DOCUMENT, Chicago, IL (Nov 3- Dec 23, 2023)
“Notah routinely draws from her identity as a Diné woman in projects that underscore Native histories and cultural continuance. In recent work as well as earlier pieces, her investment in calling attention to the significant role of Diné womanhood intersects with an insistence on accounting for resource extraction on Indigenous lands and the environmental degradation that has ensued.”
— Elizabeth S. Hawley for ART IN AMERICA
“In Natani Notah’s haunting Hooked, 2022, a piece of leather enhanced with Native American beadwork is sewn onto a found metal hook, turning a mass-produced symbol of danger and violence into something much stranger, richer, and emotionally complex. The work also asserts the validity and superiority of Native American techniques in contemporary art.”
— Jeanne Gerrity for ARTFORUM
“In similarly minimal but potent gestures, Natani Notah reveals troubled and exploitative histories of indigenous peoples in the United States in elegant assemblages like Raring to Go, made with a bike part and horsehair, and Shell-Shocked, a tender, belted bundle comprised of a vintage Four Corners T-shirt, shell beads, fake fur and plastic corn pellets. Gathered together, these cultural signifiers offer a portrait of inheritance, identity and place.”
— Kristen Wawruck for SQUARE CYLINDER
“Familial ties are also emphasized in Natani Notah’s Sister, Sister (2018), comprising a shower stool, two skirts (one of them suspended by rope), and a mixing bowl of pinto beans and sunflower seeds. Alluding, through its “missing” bodies, to the ongoing colonial violence against Native American women, the work questions, Notah said in interview, “what it means to hold up, hold onto, and let go of each other simultaneously, across generations and subjectivities.”
— Danni Shen for ART IN AMERICA
Current & Previous Institutions Worked With:
Meta Open Arts
Massillon Museum
Kala Art Institute
apexart NYC
NXTHVN
Southern Exposure
Headlands Center for the Arts
Vertmont Studio Center
Mana Contemporary Chicago
The Holland Project
SOMArts Cultural Center
Grounds for Sculpture
Gas Gallery LA
The Chapter House LA
Arion Press
UNLV Donna Beam Gallery
Stanford Art Gallery
Cantor Center for Visual Arts
Wattis Institute of Contemporary Art
Mission Cultural Center for Latino Arts
Penn State University School of Visual Arts
Berkeley Art Center
Tucson Desert Art Museum
Axis Gallery
International Sculpture Center
Slide Space 123
Root Divison
/ (slash) art space
ICA San Jose
Jen Tough Gallery
Institute for Diversity in the Arts
Linder Gallery, Keystone College
Tulsa Artist Fellowship
108 Contemporary
BMoCA
Marin MOCA
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