Dripping Earth: Cannupa Hanska Luger

An ambitious and immersive exhibition, Dripping Earth: Cannupa Hanska Luger invites visitors on a journey into the acclaimed artist’s world, where time is nonlinear, scale is skewed, and cultural identity is fluid. The exhibition takes its title from Luger’s Hidatsa clan, the Awa xee (Dripping Dirt), who oversaw the repair of earth lodge dwellings. A trained ceramicist, Luger cites his application of clay as a natural extension of his lodge-building forebears’ labor and care for their communities. New work for the exhibition incorporates customary clay practices into a range of forms, from vessels to monumental sculptures. In using his hands to shape and transform wet earth, Luger connects with ancestors past, present, and future.

An important point of departure for Dripping Earth is The Joslyn’s renowned collection of watercolors, journals, and archives documenting the North American expedition (1832–34) of the German naturalist Prince Maximilian of Wied and the Swiss artist Karl Bodmer. Luger references depictions of his Mandan and Hidatsa ancestors in sculptures that combine materials sourced from the land with the detritus of consumer culture. Clay, willow branches, crocheted blankets, industrial-grade felt, and used sports equipment come together to tell new stories and disrupt expectations.

Presenting new work across media, this exhibition expands Luger’s speculative fiction series, Future Ancestral Technologies, an ongoing project spanning sculpture, printmaking, video, and performance that embraces the role of imagination in shaping cultural narratives. The artist draws inspiration from his ancestral connection to the Northern Plains, referencing the arts and technologies of past generations to envision a future rooted in Indigenous knowledge. Situating visitors within Missouri River landscapes now submerged by colonial damming projects, Luger reveals how such interventions continue to shape the land and its people.

Dripping Earth: Cannupa Hanska Luger is organized by the Margre H. Durham Center for Western Studies at the Joslyn Art Museum. It is accompanied by an exhibition catalogue featuring reflections by the artist, scholars, and knowledge bearers.

Pictured: Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan/Hidatsa/Arikara/Lakota, b. 1979), We Survive You—Midéegaadi, editorial photograph featuring 7 mixed media buffalo regalia made of repurposed materials, © Cannupa Hanska Luger, Photograph courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, Photograph by Brandon Soder, 2023