Neesh + Soku (Moon + Sun)

Neesh + Soku (Moon + Sun) introduces Raven Halfmoon’s (Caddo Nation), first ever monumental-scale works in bronze and stone, alongside her signature glazed stoneware works. Taking the artist’s own dichotomous name as a departure point, the exhibition explores binaries – lightness/darkness, male/female, traditional/contemporary – as well as the liminal spaces between them. Drawing from the narratives of the Caddo Nation and highlighting her feminist lineage she creates totemic forms that represent herself and her maternal ancestry while reclaiming space for her Indigenous heritage through their colossal scale.

Upon meeting Raven Halfmoon, I discovered we were connected by the small town of Anadarko, situated at the intersection of our communities’ reservations on Indian Territory in what is now known as Oklahoma. I learned our grandmothers and aunties shopped at McKee’s Indian, a small post shop
that has been a place of homage for Native American artists and families for centuries. Our stories interwove as memories of our childhoods poured out—overlapping the same blue grass-covered hills, red dirt creeks, and familiar contours of southwestern Oklahoma. Halfmoon and I were both raised by strong native women whose legacies and leadership takes the form of matriarchy—whose oral histories empowered us with sovereignty and personal and collective agency—for my own practice as curator and Halfmoon’s as sculptor. Halfmoon’s newest body of work Neesh + Soku (Moon + Sun) celebrates this legacy of Native American women and the marks we leave on the land. Through her monumental sculptures, Halfmoon reinterprets portraiture through a hopeful and distinctly feminist lens and honors the presence of women and femmes in full scale.

“These sculptures reflect the binary elements of life—darkness and light, ancient and modern, traditional and contemporary. I put considerable energy and prayers into each one, so in a sense, they are individuals themselves, and it’s a spiritual process. They are designed to stand powerfully and to take up space.” —Raven Halfmoon

Marking a significant milestone in her artistic trajectory, Halfmoon’s first works in bronze and stone act as a powerful centerpiece for Neesh + Soku. Inspired by Indigenous-built, large-scale earthworks and earthen mounds in North America (such as the Spiro Mounds in Oklahoma and the Serpent Mound in Ohio) as well as the famous Moai figures on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) that Halfmoon studied while majoring in anthropology, they are a defiant act of space reclamation. The Guardians (2024) renders a powerful, nearly nine-foot-tall duo in bronze and patina standing back-to-back, inscribed with a graffitied signature and contrasting crosses, which speak to the Indigenous worldview of the four directions and the intersection of worlds. Dancing at Dusk (2024), a seven-foot sculpture composed of stacked red, black, and white travertine, illustrates a many-eyed Caddo woman adorned in a Dush-toh (a traditional Caddo headpiece worn during ceremonial Turkey Dances). Both works use multiplicity to remind us of the repeating narratives of our intertwined native history while highlighting Halfmoon’s signature material palate: reds (after the Oklahoma soil and red symbol of the MMIW [Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women] movement), blacks (referencing the natural clay native to the Red River), and creams (referencing the dualities of light against dark). Halfmoon’s stoneware work NDN Rockstar (2024) evokes a feeling of celebration and reminds me of one of my favorite hand drum songs, NDN Girls. As an “NDN girl” myself, I’m reminded of women I know and love from my community in the reclining figure’s red lippy, red nail polish, and eagle-claw bangs; Halfmoon’s work highlights their beauty and personhood. The figure’s boots, the stars, the subject’s resting pose all feel like a pop-cultural nod to NDN aunties past and present.

“I feel like my pieces are monumental reflections of identity… Not only is it my understanding and interpretation of culture, it’s a fight to maintain a place for it in today’s world.” —Raven Halfmoon

In Bucked Off Again (2024), a woman with a tilted cowboy hat raises her middle finger to the world with a bold lightning bolt spraypainted across her chest. The title, with its humorous reference to a well-known rite of passage of NDN cowgirls getting bucked off a horse (more than once), inspires a sense of freedom and agency; the lightning symbol reminds us of Elvis Presley’s galvanizing popular phrase “taking care of business.” These women, these strong and independent women, lay bare the importance of self-led narrative and the historical absence of freedom for Indigenous people in general, particularly women—the historical unfreedom to travel outside of the reservation or to express ourselves in our own languages, which were at times banned within federally mandated government schools. Raven Halfmoon’s Neesh + Soku (Moon + Sun) gives visibility to these narratives and honors her matriarch.

This text was developed from an interview with Raven Halfmoon by Jordan Poorman Cocker, August
19, 2024.

For more information about this exhibition, please contact Zoe Fisher (zoe@salon94design.com)