Opening Saturday, January 24, 5-8PM
Co-curated by Ursala Hudson and Kimberly Fulton Orozco
Aan Hít Village House (Tlingit & Haida)
Juneau, AK

Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies is a group exhibition opening Saturday, January 24, 2026 at Aan Hít Gallery in Juneau, Alaska. Featuring leading and emerging Indigenous artists from across the Northwest Coast, the exhibition explores how embodied practice, movement, material knowledge, and creative speculation function as engines of cultural continuity and future-making.

Presented by Tlingit & Haida in collaboration with Sealaska Heritage Institute and the Institute of American Indian Arts, Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies brings together contemporary Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian artists whose work pushes beyond expectations of tradition while remaining deeply rooted in ancestral responsibility.

Featured Artists

  • Alison Bremner (Tlingit)
  • Kimberly Fulton Orozco (Haida)
  • Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Aleut)
  • Ursala Hudson (Tlingit)
  • Erin Haldane (Tsimshian)
  • Jackson Polys (Tlingit)
  • Jennifer Younger (Tlingit)

Exhibition Overview

At the center of the exhibition is the archetype of Raven—figure of curiosity, disruption, and transformation. Raven does not ask permission; he wonders not only what is inside the box, but how can I change to get inside it? In this spirit, Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies considers how shape-shifting, risk, and embodied intuition have always been central to Northwest Coast artistic innovation, even when those qualities have been subdued by colonial pressure, institutional expectations, or the weight of preservation.

Through painting, printmaking, and mixed-media work, the artists gathered here move toward lineage not as replication, but as revelation. Their practices are grounded in Northwest Coast visual and philosophical frameworks while remaining open to uncertainty, play, and failure as vital conditions of becoming. Gesture—of the hand, the body, the mark—emerges as both method and meaning: responsive, intuitive, and sometimes unruly.

For generations, Indigenous communities have preserved continuity by holding fast to ancestral visual languages in the face of displacement and cultural disruption. While this preservation has been essential, it has at times constrained the wildness that allows art to evolve freely. Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies asks what becomes possible when artists are supported in moving from careful preservation toward creative emergence—when curiosity, intuition, and embodied risk are recognized not as departures from tradition, but as continuations of ancestral innovation.

The artists represented reflect a continuum of Indigenous experience: some raised deeply within homelands, others navigating diaspora, mixed heritage, or distant educational contexts. Together, their work asserts Indigenous modes of visual thinking that are ethical, relational, and cosmological. These works are not made for the art world alone. They are made for community, for children and elders, for ancestors and descendants alike.

Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies is not a departure from tradition. It is tradition in motion.

Public Programs

In conjunction with the exhibition, a moderated artist panel will be held at Sealaska Heritage Institute:

Artist Panel: Retrieving the Unseen: Knowledge from the Ancestors and the Future
Date: Thursday, January 22, 2026
Time: 12:00–1:30 PM
Location: Sealaska Heritage Institute

The panel brings together participating artists to discuss how ancestral memory, intuition, and embodied knowledge guide contemporary Indigenous creative practice.

Opening Reception

Saturday, January 24, 2026
5:00–8:00 PM
Aan Hít Gallery, Juneau, Alaska

Partnership Statement

Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies is made possible through a rare and meaningful partnership between Tlingit & Haida, Sealaska Heritage Institute, and the Institute of American Indian Arts—three Indigenous institutions that have each shaped cultural life in distinct ways, yet have seldom converged in a single contemporary exhibition platform in Southeast Alaska.

Hosted at Aan Hít Gallery, supported by Sealaska Heritage Institute’s cultural and educational infrastructure, and shaped by IAIA-trained artists and educators, the exhibition creates a shared space where Indigenous governance, cultural stewardship, and Indigenous higher education intersect. This collaboration foregrounds the role of Indigenous education in shaping contemporary Native art while reconnecting those educational lineages back to homelands and community life.

Curators

Ursala Hudson (Kadusné) — Tlingit
Ursala Hudson (Kadusné) is an interdisciplinary Tlingit artist of the T’akdeintaan clan from the Head House of the Raven moiety. Raised in a family of full-time artists, she carries forward the legacies of her parents, printmaker Bill Hudson and renowned Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver Clarissa Rizal. Her work bridges ancestral textile traditions and contemporary image-making as forms of embodied knowledge and cultural continuity. Hudson’s work is held in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Burke Museum, and the National Museum of the American Indian. She holds an MFA from IAIA and teaches as adjunct faculty at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Sáandlaanaay, Kimberly Fulton Orozco — Haida
Sáandlaanaay, Kimberly Fulton Orozco is an interdisciplinary artist whose practice spans painting, printmaking, sculpture, and conceptual installation. A Raven from the Yakhw’ Jaanaas clan, she draws on Haida, Mexican, and Scottish ancestry to explore Indigenous futurisms, embodied history, and cultural continuity. She holds an MFA from IAIA, designs for the U.S. Mint, and centers accessibility, process, and generational transmission in her work.

Kadusne: Upcoming Shows & Residencies

Residency: Independent
March 20 – April 2 (closed residency)
Gochman Family Collection
West Palm Beach, FL
Available for programing in South Florida, contact for booking

Residency: Botany and the Mapping of Ignorance
April (closed residency)
Arquetopía
Puebla, Puebla, Mexico

Residency: Ma’s House
May 15 – June 3
Ma’s House
Southampton, Shinnecock Reservation, NY

Exhibit: Sovereign Stitches + Wild Weaves
Opening 2026, touring through 2027
McCord Museum
Montreal, Québec, Canada

Exhibit: Native Fashion: Gathering in Style
Opening 2027
The James Museum
St. Petersburg, FL