Duane Linklater: mymothersside at MCA Chicago

The Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) has announced the opening of a new exhibition, Duane Linklater: mymothersside, on March 11. The exhibit features the work of Duane Linklater, an artist who explores the exclusion of Indigenous content from museums and the contradictions of contemporary Indigenous life within settler systems of knowledge, representation, and value. The exhibition includes sculptures, video works, and digital prints on linen spanning the past decade of the artist’s practice, as well as a newly commissioned work for the MCA’s atrium. Linklater’s work focuses on enduring ancestral practices such as hunting and fur trading, digital translations of tribal objects, and large-scale structures made with teepee poles. The MCA’s presentation highlights Linklater’s interest in Indigenous architecture through sculptures and paintings that deconstruct and reassemble the teepee, one of the most ubiquitous symbols of indigeneity. Linklater’s teepee cover paintings feature digitally printed imagery that he tints with natural dyes, referencing his family, childhood home, favorite bands, films, and garments to suggest an expansive constellation of identifications that defies reductive notions of identity.