A surreal figure in a fringed white garment stands on a rocky alien landscape, their head replaced by a mass of black silhouettes of birds in flight. Behind them, a massive glowing pink moon rises above towering rock formations beneath a purple and blue starlit sky, while the terrain below glows in shades of mauve and rose.

Wendy Red Star

Thunder Up Above Portfolio, Medicine Rock Child, 2011

pigment print on Fine Art Pearl

27 x 36 in (68.6 x 91.4 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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