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Artworks
Wendy Red Star
Apsáalooke, b. 1981, Billings, MT
Lives and works in Portland, OR
Wendy Red Star’s multidisciplinary practice is grounded in the histories, archives, and lived knowledge of the Apsáalooke Nation. Raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, her work grows from the stories passed through her family, the materials she encounters in historical records, and the lineage she carries forward. The places, people, and histories that shaped her early life continue to guide her research and artistic process.
Her practice is rooted in sustained attention to inherited stories, to archival traces, and to the ways Apsáalooke history lives across generations. She approaches historical materials through the lens of her own lineage, allowing relationships between memory, record, and lived experience to emerge through time and close looking. Her work grows from this process of gathering, listening, and assembling, rather than from any impulse to explain or correct the historical record.
Red Star’s work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions, including a career survey Wendy Red Star: A Scratch on the Earth (Newark Museum of Art, NJ; San Antonio Museum of Art, TX; Columbus Museum of Art, OH), and a forthcoming solo exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, opening 2027. Her work has additionally been shown at The Broad, Los Angeles, CA; Brooklyn Museum, New York, NY; Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY; Minneapolis Institute of Art, MN; National Gallery of Canada, Ontario, Canada; Portland Art Museum, OR; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; and as well as the 2023 Sharjah Biennale and 2026 NGV Triennial at the National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, among many others.
Red Star has received numerous awards including the MacArthur Fellowship (2024), Infinity Award from the International Center of Photography (2024), Anonymous Was A Woman Award (2022), Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship (2018), and Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award (2017). Her work is held in the collections of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, TX; Baltimore Museum of Art, MD; British Museum, London, UK; Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, MO; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY, among many others.
Photo by John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, courtesy the artist and Roberts Projects, Los Angeles
