Tanya Lukin Linklater

For the third season of Forge Project Talks at CCS Bard, artists present on an exhibition that has shaped their practices. This series considers exhibition histories from the speakers’ perspectives: which exhibitions have had lasting resonance, altered the course of their careers, or changed the canon. Together, these reflections generate a history of exhibitions from the perspective of those intimately engaged with them, from the inside.

Tanya Lukin Linklater makes dances in museums, videos, sculptures, and works on paper. She thinks with weather, embodiment, beingness, and ancestral belongings in her practice. Compelled by scores, orality, poetics, embodied inquiry, Indigenous knowledge transmission, and ephemerality, her works are often iterative, happening over time.

Her recent and forthcoming exhibitions and performances include Camden Art Centre, London; Dia Art Foundation, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; Portikus, Frankfurt; Rudolfinum, Prague; SITE SANTA FE; and Performance LAB, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. Her artworks have entered the collections of Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Art Gallery of Ontario, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Remai Modern, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Tate Americas Foundation, Vancouver Art Gallery, Walker Art Center, and elsewhere.

Her book, Slow Scrape (2nd edition, Talonbooks, Vancouver 2022), draws on documentary poetics, concrete-based installations, event scores, Sugt’stun and Ininímowin (Indigenous languages), and can be read alongside her choreographic practice. Her recent publications include contributions to The Routledge Companion to Indigenous Art Histories in the United States and Canada, Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me, Mark: Sonya Kelliher-Combs, and Native Visual Sovereignty: A Reader on Art and Performance.

Tanya invites dance artists Ivanie Aubin-Malo, Mya Dixon, Talia Dixon, Ceinwen Gobert, Hanako Hoshimi-Caines, Emily Law, and Brandi Norton, among others, to perform in her works. She received the Wexner Center for the Arts Artist Residency Award in Visual Arts (2023–2024) and The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Visual Arts (2021). She studied at Stanford University (A. B. Honours) and the University of Alberta (M. Ed.), and completed her Ph. D. in Cultural Studies at Queen’s University in 2023. Tanya is Sugpiaq from the Kodiak archipelago of southwestern Alaska.

This event is part of ongoing programming co-presented by Forge Project and CCS Bard. It is organized by Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation), Executive Director & Chief Curator, Forge Project, and Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies, CCS Bard.

Forge Project Talks are part of broader initiatives at Bard College that seek to place Native American and Indigenous Studies at the heart of curricular innovation, including programming organized by the Center for Indigenous Studies and the Rethinking Place initiative. These programs are made possible by the Forge Endowed Fund for Indigenous Studies at Bard College, supported by the Gochman Family Foundation, George Soros, and the Open Society Foundations.

Accessibility and recordings

• The program will be live-streamed on @Forgeprojectny and video recorded. The video recording will be available on Forge’s Vimeo page.
• CCS Bard programs are audio recorded; recordings are held in the CCS Bard Library & Archives and online. To inquire about an audio recording, contact [email protected].
• ASL-English interpretation and verbal description are available for public programs upon request with two weeks’ advance notice. Contact [email protected]. Relay and voice calls are welcome.
• When public programs are held over Zoom, live transcription is available.