Artworks

Keith Secola

Northern Ute/Anishinaabe, b. 1988, Randlett, Utah on the Uintah and Ouray Reservation

Lives and works in Tempe, AZ

Keith Secola’s interdisciplinary practice draws from his Northern Ute and Anishinaabe heritage, contemporary Native American life, and skateboard culture, bridging contemporary and traditional themes to transmit Indigenous memories, identities, and narratives. 

Fusing image, text, and memory, Secola screen-prints archival portraits of Native Americans onto the deconstructed and collaged covers of vintage books, placing Indigenous presence in direct tension with exclusionary narratives of the nation’s past. Sourced from his grandparents’ albums and other archives, Secola’s subjects often look directly back at the camera, meeting its gaze with a quiet intensity that transcends time and resists erasure.

Secola received his BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, NM, and MFA from California College of the Arts, San Francisco, CA. He has been the recipient of a Cadogan Scholarship from the San Francisco Foundation and Kala Art Institute Fellowship, as well as residencies at Local Language, Oakland, CA, and the Google Indian Network (GAIN). Secola’s work has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI; Kala Gallery, Berkeley, CA; and Minneapolis American Indian Center, MN, as well as group exhibitions at the Fine Arts Gallery, San Francisco State University, CA; Minnesota Museum of American Art, St. Paul, MN; Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND; and SOMArts Cultural Center, San Francisco, CA.

Artist CV (PDF)

Photo by Amelia Berumen, courtesy the artist