Duane Linklater
Duane Linklater’s (b. 1976, Omaskêko Ininiwak from Moose Cree First Nation; lives/works: North Bay, Ontario) practice explores the conventions of the museum in relation to the current and historical conditions of Indigenous peoples, their objects, and approaches to materials. Working across a range of media, including painting, sculpture, and video, he addresses the contradictions of contemporary Indigenous life within and beyond settler systems of knowledge, representation, and value.
Linklater was featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial: Quiet as It's Kept, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2018, Linklater installed pêyakotênaw—a public artwork comprising three large teepee sculptures—along the High Line in New York. He was the 2016 recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for Media Art, and the 2013 Sobey Art Award winner. In 2017, Linklater was awarded a public commission for the Don River Valley Park, Toronto in 2017.
He has presented solo exhibitions at Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Art Gallery of Hamilton (2023); Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2021); Catriona Jeffries, Vancouver (2020); Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University (2017); Western Front, Vancouver (2017); 80 WSE Gallery, New York, and Mercer Union, Toronto (2016); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City (2015); and the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2015). Linklater has been featured in group exhibitions including at the 35th Bienal de São Paulo; The Drawing Center, New York (2023); the 2022 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Princeton University Museum of Art (2022); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019); Artists Space, New York (2019); the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2017); SeMa Biennale, Seoul, Korea (2016); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015); Vancouver Art Gallery (2015); and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, as part of dOCUMENTA (13) (2012).