Reclaiming Home – The Ringling, USA

Reclaiming Home: Contemporary Seminole Art group exhibition will mark The Ringling’s first presentation of contemporary art by Native American artists with ancestral, historical, and present-day connections to Florida. An imperative step toward establishing a meaningful relationship with the Native American artistic community, Reclaiming Home will highlight the breadth and depth of the artwork by Seminole, Miccosukee, and mixed-heritage artists from Florida, including Noah Billie (Seminole), Wilson Bowers (Seminole), Houston R. Cypress (Miccosukee), Alyssa Osceola (Seminole), Jessica Osceola (Seminole/Irish), Brian Zepeda (Seminole), Corinne Zepeda (Seminole /Mexican), and Pedro Zepeda (Seminole). Presented with the important work by the internationally-recognized artists of Muscogee (Creek) and Seminole descent from Oklahoma and beyond—Elisa Harkins (Cherokee/Muscogee [Creek]), C. Maxx Stevens (Seminole/Muscogee [Creek]), Tony Tiger (Sac and Fox/Seminole/Muscogee [Creek]), and Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Taskigi/Diné [Navajo]/Seminole)—the exhibition will expand the conceptual framework of Native American art made in Florida today and provide a fuller understanding of the complexities of issues within the art of the Seminole diaspora.

Reclaiming Home is also the first collaboration between Florida’s Ah-Tah-Thi-Ki Museum of Seminole culture and history, located on the Big Cypress Indian Reservation, as several important loans from the museum will be featured in the exhibition. The exhibition is supported by additional lending institutions, including the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis, Indiana.

Reclaiming Home is accompanied by an exhibition catalog with scholarly texts published by Scala Arts Publishers.

This exhibition is supported, in part, by the Gulf Coast Community Foundation; The John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art Endowment; the Mandell and Madeleine Berman Foundation Endowment; and the Bob and Diane Roskamp Endowment. Sponsored, in part, by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Arts and Culture; the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; and the National Endowment for the Arts. Special thanks to The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.