Business Finance Media Technology Policy Wealth Insights Interviews

Art Art Fairs Art Market Art Reviews Auctions Galleries Museums Interviews

Lifestyle Nightlife & Dining Style Travel Interviews

Power Index Nightlife & Dining Art A.I. PR

About About Observer Advertise With Us Reprints

Anna Tsouhlarakis and Native Visibility at the Whitney Biennial

The artist's blanched horse topped with pointed arms and spears stood apart in a show that otherwise tended toward conceptual restraint.

Anna Tsouhlarakis’s SHE MUST BE A MATRIARCH (2023), a blanched horse sculpture topped with pointed arms and spears mounted on a bed of inflated condoms, is a uniquely humorous and loaded intervention among the six Indigenous artists in the 2026 Whitney Biennial. The sextet—Tsouhlarakis, Raven Halfmoon, Teresa Baker, Nani Chacon, Kimowan Metchewais, Kekahi Wahi—hail from diffuse tribal nations and Hawai‘i, and their display at the biennial coinciding with the 250th anniversary of the U.S. reflects an acknowledgement of Indigenous artists as integral to the American art canon. At the Biennial’s members’ night, Tsouhlarakis’s work was an almost gravitational force—drawing in a tight circle of influential Native artists and cultural figures, including composer Raven Chacon, designer Brian Polymode and co-curator Rachel Martin from the Gochman Collection. Their presence isn’t fanfare but rather recognition, even as these artists navigate spaces where institutional caution and political pressures shape what can be shown.

Sign Up For Our Daily Newsletter

Thank you for signing up!

By clicking submit, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge we may use your information to send you emails, product samples, and promotions on this website and other properties. You can opt out anytime.

Tsouhlarakis’s spiked fiberglass white horse sculpture stood apart in a show that otherwise tended toward conceptual restraint. The contrast was brought into sharp relief earlier........

© Observer