Critics’ Picks: The Potential of Objects
“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
The Potential of Objects @ Marin MOCA
“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
The Stuff of Life
“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
Natani Notah limns the push-pull of Native existence in ‘Normal Force’
“Dualities exist throughout the exhibition, reinforced by Notah’s poetic titling paired with materials that hold multiplicity. One Synonym of Tumor is Enemy uses a shirt from the artist’s father wrapped in a round bundle around protrusions of fur and richly blue fabric with beadwork. The outlying beige beading surrounds larger black beads grouped in the center, forming a void. Both the title and the emotional impact of the beadwork foreground pain and loss. However, as this ache is held by a soft embrace of the well-worn shirt, there is also an enduring presence of love.”
— Tamara Suarez Porras for 48HILLS
Spotlight Continues Shining On Female Native American Artists
“Art is the Seed explores how historic Native American crafts are the cultural ‘seeds’ inspiring many Native American women artists today. The exhibition features contemporary works by Native American artists Cara Romero, Marla Allison, Sarah Sense, Natani Notah, Darby Raymond-Overstreet and Leah Mata Fragua.
These artists use performance art, photography, sculpture, painting and collage to fuse historic and culturally specific symbols with 21st century ideas. The artists forge new ways of being Native American in the modern world, affirming that Indigenous culture is both continually evolving and permanent.”
— Chadd Scott for FORBES
LA’s Spring/Break Art Show Is Delightfully Garish and Over-the-Top
“Supercollider x Femmebit’s booth features works by female artists exploring the intersection of art and technology, and mobile art space Gas Gallery’s show Culture explores American identities shaped through car culture…Gas Gallery founder Ceci Moss and Rosie with work by Louise Rosendal (wallpaper), Nikita Gale (lettering), Dahn Gim (left sculpture), Natani Notah (center sculpture) for her show “Custom” focused on American car culture.”
— Matt Stromberg for HYPERALLERGIC
Review: AH’-WAH-NEE at UNLV’s Donna Beam Fine Art Gallery
“In Lady in Beads, Notah repurposes a t-shirt with a fetishized Indigenous woman to comment on the construction of the body and identity. The shapeshifting form, which is the size of a baby or small animal, abstracts this mythicized imagery and questions its purpose and usefulness in Indigenous womanhood.”
— Laurence Myers Reese for SOUTHWEST CONTEMPORARY
From the Ground Up: Diné Women Artists Fight for Environmental Justice
“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