03, 2019
Luzene Hill
Luzene Hill is a multidisciplinary artist known for immersive installations and performance collaborations. Through work informed by the pre-contact culture of the Americas, Hill advocates for Indigenous sovereignty - linguistic, cultural, and individual sovereignty. Hill focuses on the complex but important topic of violence against women, providing a voice for the silence that prevails in these experiences. Employing early autochthonous motifs, she asserts female power and sexuality to challenge colonial patriarchy.
Born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia, Hill spent time as a youth with her Cherokee family during summer vacations in North Carolina, where she currently resides. A Western Carolina University alumna, she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts, summa cum laude, in 2007 and a Master of Fine Arts in 2012 from that university. From 2006 to 2007, Hill was a National Artist Advisory Board member for ATLATL; in 2009, she received an Individual Artist Grant from the National Native Creative Development; in 2015, a First Peoples Fund Fellowship; and in 2016, a Native Arts and Culture Foundation National Artist Fellowship. She also taught at Callanwolde Arts Center from 2014 to 2017, and in 2012, her drawings were exhibited in the traveling expedition Octopus Dreams: 200 Works on Paper by Contemporary Native American Artists.
“Our paths dip and wind through encounters, exploration, danger, disappointment, eventually straying into uncharted areas of ourselves.”
Luzene Hill
Most recently, Luzene Hill created a custom aluminum sculpture for the 2022 edition of the Armory Show in New York and was featured in publications like Artnet, The Art Newspaper, and others. The work, "To Rise and Begin Again," is made up of undulating columns that symbolize the upward push of Cherokee sovereignty, defying efforts to crush it. Each column has a letterpress piece with a Cherokee syllabary to spread awareness of the written language. In an interview with the New York Times about the monumental piece, she announces, "We're still here, and we keep rising up."
Hill's work can be found in numerous public collections, such as the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis; The Heard Museum, Phoenix; The Portland Art Museum, Portland; Dartmouth College, Hanover; Coosawattee Foundation, Atlanta; Microsoft, Inc., Redmond; and private collections.
An enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians, Hill lives and works on the Qualla Boundary, Cherokee, NC. She has exhibited throughout the United States, Canada, Russia, Japan, and the United Kingdom. Awards include Ucross Fellowship, Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship, Eiteljorg Museum Fellowship, and First Peoples Fund Fellowship. Recent residencies include the Social Engagement Residency, IAIA MoCNA; Invited Artist Residency, Anderson Ranch Arts Center; and Invited Artist Residency, Township 10. Hill's work is featured in Susan Powers' book, "Cherokee Art: Prehistory to Present," Josh McPhee's book, "Celebrate People's History!: The Poster Book of Resistance and Revolution", and the PBS Documentary, "Native Art NOW!"
Ꭰ Ꭶ Ꮒ Ꮠ Ꮧ
“To Rise And Begin Again” displays 29 characters of the Cherokee syllabary in the form of a 19th-century letterpress typeface rising up.
The syllabary is comprised of 85 characters, representing syllables, not letters. This writing system, created by Sequoyah, a Cherokee polymath, was completed and adopted by the Cherokee Nation in 1821. Within two years, 90% of the Cherokee people were literate.
Two hundred years later, Cherokee and other Indigenous languages are endangered. When a language dies, a culture ceases to be expressed and shared. Indigenous languages reflect what people value: their history, cosmology, medicine, myths, and humor.
This undulating image suggests the lyrical rise and fall of spoken language, the rise, fall – and unrelenting rise again – of Indigenous people. Cities mimic that ever-upward push in their skyline silhouettes. Indigenous ironworkers, “Skywalkers,” have been integral to NYC’s skyline rise for over a hundred years.
To Rise and Begin Again, 2022