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Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies is a group exhibition opening Saturday, January 24, 2026 at Aan Hít Gallery in Juneau, Alaska. Featuring leading and emerging Indigenous artists from across the Northwest Coast, the exhibition explores how embodied practice, movement, material knowledge, and creative speculation function as engines of cultural continuity and future-making. Presented by Tlingit & Haida in collaboration with Sealaska Heritage Institute and the Institute of American Indian Arts, Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies brings together contemporary Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian artists whose work pushes beyond expectations of tradition while remaining deeply rooted in ancestral responsibility.𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐞𝐝 𝐀𝐫𝐭𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐬
Alison Bremner (Tlingit)
Kimberly Fulton Orozco (Haida)
Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Aleut)
Ursala Hudson (Tlingit)
Erin Haldane (Tsimshian)
Jackson Polys (Tlingit)
Jennifer Younger (Tlingit)
𝐄𝐱𝐡𝐢𝐛𝐢𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐎𝐯𝐞𝐫𝐯𝐢𝐞𝐰
At the center of the exhibition is the archetype of Raven—figure of curiosity, disruption, and transformation. Raven does not ask permission; he wonders not only what is inside the box, but how can I change to get inside it? In this spirit, Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies considers how shape-shifting, risk, and embodied intuition have always been central to Northwest Coast artistic innovation, even when those qualities have been subdued by colonial pressure, institutional expectations, or the weight of preservation.
Through painting, printmaking, and mixed-media work, the artists gathered here move toward lineage not as replication, but as revelation. Their practices are grounded in Northwest Coast visual and philosophical frameworks while remaining open to uncertainty, play, and failure as vital conditions of becoming. Gesture—of the hand, the body, the mark—emerges as both method and meaning: responsive, intuitive, and sometimes unruly.
For generations, Indigenous communities have preserved continuity by holding fast to ancestral visual languages in the face of displacement and cultural disruption. While this preservation has been essential, it has at times constrained the wildness that allows art to evolve freely. Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies asks what becomes possible when artists are supported in moving from careful preservation toward creative emergence—when curiosity, intuition, and embodied risk are recognized not as departures from tradition, but as continuations of ancestral innovation.
The artists represented reflect a continuum of Indigenous experience: some raised deeply within homelands, others navigating diaspora, mixed heritage, or distant educational contexts. Together, their work asserts Indigenous modes of visual thinking that are ethical, relational, and cosmological. These works are not made for the art world alone. They are made for community, for children and elders, for ancestors and descendants alike.Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies is not a departure from tradition. It is tradition in motion.
Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies is made possible through a rare and meaningful partnership between Tlingit & Haida, Sealaska Heritage Institute, and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) — three institutions that have each shaped Indigenous arts and cultural life in distinct ways, yet have seldom converged in a single, contemporary exhibition platform in Southeast Alaska.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
219 South Franklin Street, Juneau, AK, United States, Alaska 99801
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups - all the happenings, one place.
