Athena LaTocha’s (Ojibwe and Hunkpapa Lakota) massive works on paper explore the relationship between human-made and natural worlds. The artist incorporates materials such as ink, lead, earth, and wood, while responding to the storied and, at times, traumatic histories that are rooted in place.
LaTocha’s work has been shown at MoMA P.S.1 in Long Island City, NY; Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, AR; Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VI; IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Santa Fe, NM; Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, Summit, NJ; Smack Mellon, The Green-Wood Cemetery, and BRIC House, Brooklyn, NY; CUE Art Foundation and Artists Space, New York City; South Dakota Art Museum, Brookings, SD; New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA; the International Gallery of Contemporary Art in Anchorage, AK.
LaTocha is the recipient of artist grants and awards, among them the Saint-Gaudens Fellowship (2023); Rockefeller Brothers Fund Pocantico Art Prize in Visual Arts (2022); Eiteljorg Fellowship, the National Academy Affiliated Fellowship at the American Academy in Rome, and NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellowship in Painting (2021); Joan Mitchell Foundation (2019, 2016); Wave Hill (2018); and the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (2013).