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Exhibition: (ha)kirin?k / to return home

'(ha)kirin?k / to return home'––on view through Sept. 21, 2024 at the Miller Art Museum in downtown Sturgeon Bay––is the debut solo exhibition featuring the work of Henry Payer, a Ho Chunk enrolled in the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, and a multidisciplinary artist currently based in Sioux City, Iowa. The exhibition marks the first of this magnitude that celebrates an Indigenous artist for the Miller Art Museum and the artist’s return to his ancestral homeland in the State of Wisconsin.

“My work generally has to do with the culture that I come from, and my background as a Ho-Chunk, the Indigenous people of Wisconsin,” Payer said. “I’m trying to get people to question and learn more about not only their cultural perspective but about history. This is not just my history that I’m talking about. It’s American history. It’s regional history. It’s state history. It’s local history. Indigenous history.”

Payer references the altered landscape through indigenous cartographic methods of “picture-writing” combined with European modernist models of cubism, spatial distortion, and collage. In his collages, he utilizes found objects, and other media such as ledger paper to create narratives about the history of the Ho Chunk people of Wisconsin and their removal westward. Payer’s fourth grandfather, Alexander Payer, lived through all stages of the removal from the State of Wisconsin and served as an interpreter for the Ho Chunk during that time. Each of the more than 35 works included in the exhibition offers a visual narrative of symbols and appropriated voices from American consumer society. The symbols and voices reconfigure history, the landscape, or the identity of a portrait, such as the portrait in the exhibition of Alexander.

Ultimately, Payer aims to contribute to the revision of the Ho Chunk history through the creation of a contemporary aesthetic of the Ho Chunk narrative.

Starts: July 12, 2024
Ends: September 21, 2024
Event Times: The Miller Art Museum is open Mon. 10 am - 7pm and Tues. - Sat. 10 am - 5 pm.
Ticket Information: Free admission
URL: https://millerartmuseum.org/news/new-exhibitions-featuring-indigenous-artists-ha-kirinak-to-return-home-by-henry-payer-and-stand-together-opening-with-reception-at-miller-art-museum-on-july-12

Additional Contact Information:
Helen del Guidice, curator
P: 920.746.0707
E: hdelguidice@millerartmuseum.org

Location of this event

Miller Art Museum
107 S 4th Avenue
Sturgeon Bay, WI 54235



Phone: 920 746-0707
Accessibility: FULLY Accessible
Email: bmam@dcwis.com
Web site: millerartmuseum.org
Description:Comfortable and beautiful - changing exhibits and Permanent Collection. Gerhard CF Miller Wing