2025 New Editions: Dyani White Hawk
Dyani White Hawk, Wóablakela | Tranquility series on view at The Armory Show, 2025.
Dyani White Hawk’s new print series with Tandem Press, titled Wóablakela | Tranquility, radiates tranquil, meditative qualities achieved through color harmony, implied dimensionality, repetition, symmetry, and balance between stillness and movement, organic gesture, and precise forms.
Rooted in her longstanding practice of abstracting Lakota quillwork and beadwork, these prints incorporate a quilting diamond pattern—a homage to a rare beadwork technique White Hawk first encountered on a cradleboard featured in an exhibition at the Coe Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her formal choices draw from both personal memory and collective traditions within modernist and Indigenous approaches to abstraction.
Drawing on the artist’s continued exploration of the Lakota kapemni symbol–two triangles meeting at their points, mirroring one another–this symbol speaks to interconnection and interdimensional space, simultaneously referencing the spiritual and physical realms.
Dyani White Hawk, Wóablakela | Tranquility (Blue), 2025. Click to view.
Dyani White Hawk, Wóablakela | Tranquility (Green), 2025. Click to view.
Dyani White Hawk, Wóablakela | Tranquility (Red), 2025. Click to view.
Color plays a central role in White Hawk’s work. Vivid jewel tones—particularly greens, blues, and reds—carry both personal resonance and cultural significance. The deep green, layered with a repeating gold star pattern, references meaningful relationships in the artist’s life as she recalls materials used in a friend’s jingle dress and a skirt made for White Hawk by another friend. The addition of variations in red and blue creates a cohesive trio, each offering a subtle shift in mood and light, together reflecting a Northern Plains aesthetic through palette choices, material references, and symbolism.
Drawing on the artist’s continued exploration of the Lakota kapemni symbol–two triangles meeting at their points, mirroring one another–this symbol speaks to interconnection and interdimensional space, simultaneously referencing the spiritual and physical realms.
The Wóablakela | Tranquility series represents the emotional experiences of living with intention, of actively practicing peace within, and seeking understanding of our place within the whole of our shared existence.
The Wóablakela | Tranquility series represents the emotional experiences of living with intention, of actively practicing peace within, and seeking understanding of our place within the whole of our shared existence.
Dyani White Hawk discusses proofs with Collaborative Printmaker Patrick Smyczek in the Tandem Press studio, 2025
Dyani White Hawk and Collaborative Printmaker Jason Ruhl in the Tandem Press studio, 2025
Films for printing Wóablakela | Tranquility series, 2025
Collaborative Printmaker Patrick Smyczek printing Wóablakela | Tranquility (Green), 2025
Screen print set up for printing the next color for Wóablakela | Tranquility series, 2025
Dyani White Hawk and Collaborative Printmaker Jason Ruhl using the laser cutter in the Tandem Press studio, 2025
Dyani White Hawk signing the Wóablakela | Tranquility (Green) edition in her studio, 2025. Photo by sara tonko.
Dyani White Hawk in her studio with Tandem Press Collaborative Printmakers Joe Freye, Jason Ruhl, and Patrick Smyczek, 2025. Photo by sara tonko.
As an artist of Lakota, German, and Welsh heritage who grew up within both Native and urban American communities, Dyani White Hawk (b. 1976, Madison, Wisconsin) draws from personal experiences as well as the history of Lakota abstraction and Euro-American abstraction to create works that ask us to think critically about how the mainstream retelling of histories has excluded vast segments of our population. She earned a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship (2024), Creative Capital grant (2024), MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2023), Anonymous Was a Woman Award (2021), Academy of Arts and Letters Award, McKnight Foundation Fellowship (2013 and 2013), Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation Minnesota Art Prize (2020), United States Artists Fellowship in Visual Art (2019), Eiteljorg Fellowship for Contemporary Art, Jerome Hill Artists Fellowship, Forecast for Public Art Mid-Career Development Grant, Nancy Graves Grant for Visual Artists (2018), Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowships (2017 and 2015) and a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Grant (2014). She has participated in residencies in Australia, Russia, and Germany. Her work is in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, Brooklyn Museum, Museum of Modern Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Walker Art Center, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts Museum, Denver Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Art, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Tweed Museum of Art, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Akta Lakota Museum among other public and private collections.
Love Language, a major survey of White Hawk’s art practice spanning fifteen years, recently began a three-year international tour and is currently on view at the Walker Art Center through February 15, 2026.
