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Artworks
Jordan Ann Craig
Northern Cheyenne, b. 1992, San Jose, CA
Lives and works in Santa Fe County, NM
Jordan Ann Craig’s abstract compositions are characterized by a dynamic exploration and interpretation of Northern Cheyenne and Cheyenne material culture. Incorporating vivid colors, recurring patterns, and gridded, interwoven forms, her work explores and celebrates her Native ancestry, posing questions about the languages of modern abstract painting and the relationship to both historic and contemporary Indigenous culture. Craig’s research-based practice begins in museum collections and archives, where she spends time meticulously studying Indigenous material culture. Her pictorial vocabulary—repeated triangles, squares, rectangles and stripes in a horizontal composition—is drawn specifically from Northern Cheyenne and Cheyenne beadwork, drawings, and textiles. Offering a snippet into her personal world, Craig’s resolutely geometric compositions are paired with poetic and emotive, conversational, and often humorous titles that weave memory and life experience with illusory narrative. In transcendental investigations, she creates new narratives whilst celebrating and expanding the legacies of Native American art making.
it takes a long time to stay here, a solo exhibition of Craig’s work, originated at the Block Museum at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL in 2025, before traveling to Newcomb Art Museum at Tulane University, New Orleans, LA (2025); Westmoreland Museum of American Art, Pittsburgh, PA (2026); and Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, (forthcoming, 2027). Her work has additionally featured in solo shows at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Roswell Museum & Art Center, NM; Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, OK; and Wichita Museum, KS; as well as group shows at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH; McEvoy Foundation, San Francisco, CA; and Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center, Oklahoma City, OK.
Craig is a recipient of the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award and Creative Capital Award (both 2024), as well as residencies at Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA), Fountainhead, Kala Art Institute, and Facebook. Her work is held in the collections of The Art Institute of Chicago, IL; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Forge Collection, Taghkanic, NY; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Hood Museum of Art, Hanover, NH; Speed Art Museum, Louisville, KH; Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM; and Toledo Museum of Art, OH, among others.
Photo by Madison Craig, courtesy Hales London and New York. © Hales Gallery.
