For his solo exhibition at MCA Denver, Steven J. Yazzie (Diné/​Laguna Pueblo) presents recent painting, drawing, sculpture, and video works that reflect on his shifting perceptions of and relationship with landscape. Yazzie is a multidisciplinary artist who explores the complexities of an Indigenous experience as it relates to personal identity, community relationships, and a connection to the land as the source of life, stories, conflict, and healing.

Yazzie’s work often draws inspiration from personal memories and immersive experiences revisiting sites in the northern region of the Navajo reservation (Dinétah) in Arizona and New Mexico, where the artist grew up. For this exhibition, Yazzie was commissioned to create several paintings, drawings, and a sculpture that focus on his traversing of locations in Colorado, where he resides. The exhibition’s title, Meandered, is both a metaphor for Yazzie’s artistic process and a framework for exploring organic patterns or phenomena in nature.

From energetic, colorful landscape paintings to a sculpture crafted from fallen trees, to drawings made while the artist rode a bicycle, the selection of works on view conveys a sense of motion and temporal progression intrinsic to many contemporary interactions between humans and nature. Today, natural landscapes are often taken in from the window of a moving vehicle, viewed from our phones or computer screens, or conjured from distant or secondhand memories. Deconstructing romanticized notions and imagery of the West, Yazzie’s works are both grounded in sites of his past and present and characterized by a visceral motion that fluctuates between control and chaos. 

About the artist

Steven J. Yazzie (b. 1970, Newport Beach, California; lives and works in Denver) is a member of the Navajo Nation and a veteran of the Gulf War, serving honorably with the United States Marine Corps, 1988 – 92. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Intermedia at Arizona State University and was named the 2014 outstanding graduate for the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. He also studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, 2006. 

Yazzie is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, installation, video/​film and community. He is the co-founder of Digital Preserve, a video/​film production project prioritizing collaborations with Indigenous communities and arts and cultural institutions. Additionally, Yazzie was a founding member of the indigenous arts collective, Postcommodity, and is the co-founder of the Museum of Walking. 

Yazzie’s notable exhibitions include the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; the Museum of Contemporary Native Art; Throughout Arizona: Heard Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona State University Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson Museum of Art

Yazzie is a 2021 recipient of the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship and was awarded Community Scholar for the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for the Study of (in)Equality, University of Denver, Colorado. In 2022, Yazzie was the Native Artist in Residence at the Denver Art Museum.