Hold to This Earth review – an explosion of anger as Indigenous America shakes up Yorkshire

Yorkshire Sculpture Park is hosting an ambitious survey of Indigenous North American art that challenges conventional distinctions between craft and fine art. 'Hold to This Earth' presents work by 38 artists from across the United States and Canada, spanning media as varied as Navajo textiles, Pueblo ceramics, beadwork, video installations, and neon sculpture. The exhibition engages profoundly with questions of land dispossession, cultural survival, and the intersection of queer and Indigenous identity. Works by Jeffrey Gibson, Dyani White Hawk, and Melissa Cody demonstrate how ancestral visual traditions can be reimagined to address contemporary concerns. The collection has been drawn from the Santa Fe-based Tia Collection.

The show does not shy away from political engagement. Memorials to resistance fighters, protest imagery, and explicit critiques of ongoing colonial violence recur throughout the galleries. Rose B Simpson's ceramic work, including a striking piece depicting her mother's self-creation from clay, exemplifies the exhibition's integration of multiple generations and its grounding of contemporary practice in millennia-old traditions. Critics have noted that while some individual works fall short, the collection as a whole offers a compelling introduction to contemporary Indigenous art-making. The exhibition runs through April 18th.

Sources: theguardian.com