Visiting Artist: Will Wilson – The Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange

The Critical Indigenous Photographic Exchange

Join Cranbrook Academy of Art at deSalle Auditorium for a free, public lecture from Visiting Artist Will Wilson. Wilson will survey his work as a contemporary Indigenous cultural practitioner and trans-customary artist. The presentation will cover his art practice, curatorial work, and public art production.

Will Wilson’s art projects center around the continuation and transformation of customary Indigenous cultural practice. He is a Diné photographer and trans-customary artist who spent his formative years living on the Navajo Nation.  Wilson studied photography, sculpture, and art history at the University of New Mexico (MFA, Photography, 2002) and Oberlin College (BA, Studio Art and Art History, 1993).  In 2010 he was awarded the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award for Sculpture, in 2016 the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant for Photography, in 2017, the NM Governor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts, and in 2021 the NDN Collective’s Radical Imaginationgrant, and the Native Arts and Culture Foundation SHIFTfellowship.  Wilson has taught at the Institute of American Indian Arts, Oberlin College, and the University of Arizona. In 2020, Wilson was Doran Artist in Residence at the Yale University Art Gallery, and in 2022 he is co-curator of Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography, a nationally touring exhibition.  Wilson is Program Head of Photography at the Santa Fe Community College.