A figure with long white hair stands on a rippled desert landscape wearing a vibrant yellow garment with geometric patterns in orange, red, and white. Behind them, a glowing planet hovers against a cosmic sky of purple, blue, and golden clouds scattered with stars.

Wendy Red Star

Thunder Up Above Portfolio, Sits with the Stars, 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.

inquire

More by Wendy Red Star (View All)