Aloha Friends,
As someone who cares about the arts and cultures of Native peoples, you understand how art can transcend language, cultural and social barriers to touch people and connect communities in significant and profound ways. The Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) believes that American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian peoples offer pathways to engage powerful conversations and actions through creative expression.
Your gift to the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation enables YOU to empower Native artists and communities to become a force for social change.
We believe that the arts and cultures of Indigenous peoples are compelling, vibrant and steeped in knowledge. Art can offer perspectives that inspire creative solutions to some of our nation’s most difficult collective challenges.
NACF proudly supports Native artists and Native-led arts organizations who are promoting Indigenous truth and human values through their collective work. We are excited to expand these cultural perspectives by increasing their reach and visibility, and we want you to be a part of it!
We support artists to create, peoples to connect, and communities to act. Your courage and commitment to Native peoples join with ours as we hold the transformational space for Native communities to manifest their vision. Your gift will help fund unique projects that involve Native artists working with contemporary Native communities on social, cultural and environmental issues of relevance to Indigenous peoples and our nation.
Will you stand with me now in giving generously to support this vital work?
Mahalo for your help, consideration, and generosity.
T.Lulani Arquette (Native Hawaiian), President & CEO
Read more about some of the artists and projects that the Native Arts and Cultures supports below!
Visual Artist John Feodorov (Navajo)
2011 NACF Artist Fellow
As the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation (NACF) enters its 10th year of working with Native artists, we caught up with John Feodorov who was one of our first fellows from the inaugural fellowship cohort of 2011. In the eight years since Feodorov was awarded the NACF Artist Fellowship, he has continued to make an impact with his unique visual expression of identity, culture, power, consumerism, spirituality, land and the environment.
Feodorov is an Associate Professor of Art at Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Western Washington University in Bellingham, Washington. In his recent work Desecration, Feodorov responds to issues of ongoing environmental threats to the Navajo Nation in a series of four paintings. Each image depicts the environmental degradation of Diné land through uranium mining, coal mining, fracking and water pollution. Painted on Navajo rugs commissioned specifically for Desecration, Feodorov notes that “it’s the sacredness of the rug that is essential to the meaning of the work.” Desecration is currently on display through December 2019 at the Seattle Art Museum in an exhibition titled, “YOU ARE ON INDIGENOUS LAND: places/displaces.”
When asked how the NACF Artist Fellowship impacted his career, Feodorov said that the award gave him validation as a contemporary Native artist. While his current projects are still tied to his own Native experience, his intent is to make a body of work that is applicable to the worldwide experience of assimilation through immigration – what it means to lose land, culture, and sacred places – making art relevant to the world, not just the art world. “My art has become more referential of my Native background… less politically overt, but it’s much more personal than it used to be,” Feodorov adds.
Exhibition Matriarchs artlab21 Foundation / ESMoA
2018 NACF Special Project
“EXPERIENCE # 37: Matriarchs” is a recent exhibition at the El Segundo Museum of Art (ESMoA) in California that featured twelve Indigenous women artists including three Native Arts and Cultures (NACF) fellows: Courtney M. Leonard, Cara Romero, and the late Shan Goshorn. With its support of projects such as Matriarchs, the NACF aims to amplify the voice of artists, communities and organizations that address social issues concerning Native communities through the lens of arts and cultures.
Interested in dismantling Native stereotypes and decolonizing art institutions, the exhibition’s curators selected women artists who are engaged in raising awareness about identity, history, land and environmental justice. The works featured in Matriarchs challenged preconceived notions of Native peoples through art, exposing a large audience to contemporary Native life over the course of three months.
Cara Romero’s (Chemehuevi) award-winning photographs were included in the exhibition for their depictions of Native American pop-culture, which challenge existing stereotypes and reimagine the Native narrative. As a 2017 NACF Mentor Artist Fellow, Romero worked with an apprentice for one-year to impart her expertise as a visual storyteller to the next generation of Native artists. Her stylistically diverse images have appeared in numerous art exhibitions and publications including most recently the National Geographic magazine.