Sweat Lodges, from the series My Home Is Where My Tipi Sits

In 2019, upon returning home to the reservation where she grew up, Wendy Red Star received her Apsáalooke (Crow) name: Baaeétitchish (One Who Is Talented). “Home” lies at the center of Red Star’s work, as does her commitment to highlighting Apsáalooke culture, identity, and belonging amidst the complexities of contemporary North America. Her work reaches across mediums in echoing and satirizing popular culture to deconstruct representations of Indigenous people in an act of decolonization—the decolonization of images themselves as well as ways of seeing and knowing. The series title My Home Is Where My Tipi Sits refers to a phrase borne out of territorial negotiations, spoken by the Apsáalooke Chief Sits In The Middle Of The Land. The series juxtaposes the artist’s own Apsáalooke perspective with the authoritative, Western way of viewing.These works not only catalogue typologies of reservation architectures and objects but do so while referencing the visual language of Bernd and Hilla Becher’s photographic architectural surveys. Reappropriating the gridding technique defined by the Bechers, Red Star builds vibrant compositions highlighting the physical aspects of Apsáalooke spaces that speak to a uniquely Indigenous experience and way of knowing. When assembled in these lattice compositions, everyday subjects are placed in direct conversation with Western practices of classification, and with them the reduction of Indigenous existences to stereotypical singularities.—Gianni Valenti, Class of 2021, MRP 2022