Initial Exhibition

The first exhibition of OUR INDIGENOUS FUTURE is taking place at Creative Nations at The Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, Colorado and features works from six of the ten artists who participated in the workshop: Sage Deal (Pyramid Lake Paiute), Rosalyn Paz (Purépecha+Community of Ihuatzio), Elizabeth Tafoya (Jicarilla Apache+Laguna Pueblo), Eshtolae Ribera (Navajo+Apache+Crow), Brielle Patillo (Northern Arapaho+Northern Cheyenne+Lakota), and Ana Barcenas (Chippewa Cree).

The opening night event is July 19, 2025 from 5-8pm and includes catering provided by Ch’il Indigenous Foods!

Curator’s Statement

OUR INDIGENOUS FUTURE honors the vision of six young Native artists as they observe their lives growing up in Colorado's Front Range. Unlike so much photography that is focused on information, documentation, and the need to explain, the photographs in OUR INDIGENOUS FUTURE are intentionally left open for collaborative interpretation by the viewer. They are presented without titles, captions, or any other information, and combined into intuitive three-dimentional collages inspired by the creative and personal intentions of each artist. The results invite the viewer to make sense of it all for themselves by considering their observations in the context of their own experiences and biases and, in the process, to understand their story in the stories of others, surfacing truths about themselves, their place in the world beyond themselves, and the interconnectedness of human experience.

The featured artists, Sage Deal (19 years old; Pyramid Lake Paiute), Rosalyn Paz (17 years old; Purépecha+Community of Ihuatzio), Elizabeth Tafoya (16 years old; Jicarilla Apache+Laguna Pueblo), Eshtolae Ribera (15 years old; Navajo+Apache+Crow), Brielle Patillo (12 years old; Northern Arapaho+Northern Cheyenne+Lakota), and Ana Barcenas (12 years old; Chippewa Cree) were six in a cohort of ten Native youth who participated in a Story Collaborative creative photography workshop facilitated by Jason Houston and Dewi Sungai of eight16 creative, with support from RedLine Contemporary Arts Center’s INSITE Fund.