A figure with long white hair viewed from behind stands before a cosmic landscape, wearing a brilliant blue sequined cape over a white beaded garment resembling Big Ben. Earth and moon loom large in a starlit sky above snow-capped mountains reflected in still water below.

Wendy Red Star

Thunder Up Above Portfolio, Hoop in the Cloud, 2011

pigment print on Fine Art Pearl

27 x 30 in (68.6 x 76.2 cm)

Single print not available. Inquire on full portfolio.

In Thunder Up Above (2011), Wendy Red Star imagines Native presence in a futuristic, otherworldly landscape. The series grew from Red Star’s designs for powwow-inspired regalia that combine references to Native dress with elements drawn from Victorian fashion and twentieth-century silhouettes. The resulting figures inhabit fantastical planetary environments, bringing Indigenous identity, history, and futurity into the same visual space. Red Star has described the figures as “First People (Natives) in the Final Frontier,” connecting the series to the history of first contact between Europeans and Native peoples. By placing her figures in unfamiliar celestial landscapes, she plays with ideas of exploration, otherness, and the ways Native people have historically been perceived and represented by outsiders.

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