Radiant ‘Love Language’ at Walker Art Center puts Lakota design in contemporary spotlight 

About a decade ago, as artist Dyani White Hawk’s career took off, she began inviting others into her process. Her inspiration, in part, came from collaborations close to home. “If you go to a powwow and see somebody’s full regalia, chances are many family members contributed to create it,” said White Hawk, a member of the Sičáŋǧu Lakota Nation. “Then one person puts on this collective expression and dances it all to life. And that is community.” 

That idea, relayed in the catalogue for “Love Language,” the Walker Art Center’s elegant new exhibition of White Hawk’s work, provides a meaningful entry point to her artistry.

The show includes meticulous, time-intensive pieces. While she created much of her early work alone, many of the more recent pieces, often grand in scale, relied on collaboration with artists including beaders, printmakers, glass fabricators and mosaic specialists. Lakota decorative arts like beading and quillwork appear throughout. Sometimes White Hawk’s pieces include beads or quills stitched directly onto the canvas; other times she translates their geometric patterns and color harmonies into paint, glass and tile.

“Her influences come first from Lakota artistic practices, and secondarily from modernist histories,” said Tarah Hogue, adjunct curator of Indigenous Art at Remai Modern in Saskatchewan, Canada, which will host the exhibit after the run at the Walker. 

Related: Minnesota Anishinaabe artists well-represented at major new exhibition in Detroit

White Hawk’s collaborative spirit extends across disciplines. She worked with master printer Cole Rogers on a series of screen prints inspired by Lakota dresses. With stained glass company Franz Mayer of Munich, she developed shimmering mosaics, made from Venetian glass and copper-infused tile, for some of her most recent pieces like “Many Blessings” and “Within.”

“As more people come in to support either the production or the creation of works, or through collaborative working, the practice expands,” White Hawk said at a media preview. She pointed to newer projects incorporating photography and video, like “LISTEN,” featuring Indigenous women speaking their native languages, and to sculptures and “really giant beaded, super ambitious things that I can’t do by myself.”

Throughout the exhibit, White Hawk’s work challenges Western understandings of art and art history. In “Untitled, Blue and White Stripes (The History of Abstraction)” (2013), she stitches rows of beads over a painted background, giving beadwork equal footing. 

Her hope, she said, is to create pieces asking viewers “to think about how we’ve been taught what the art world is, and how we can choose to look at what we’ve been told the models are,” she said. 

The final section of the exhibit features works with repeating kapémni – a Lakota symbol resembling an hourglass, symbolic of the physical realm below and the spiritual above. “Wopila | Lineage” (2022) is an 8’x14’ beaded painting of colorful kapémni, commanding in scale and astonishing in intricacy. 

“Infinite We” (2025) takes the kapémni form into three dimensions. Fabricated with enamel on copper and shown publicly for the first time, it immerses viewers in White Hawk’s dancing angles, referencing a color palette drawn from her beadwork. 

Behind “Infinite We,” a window overlooks the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden. There, a 2017 installation referencing the 1862 hanging of 38 Dakota warriors sparked large protests led by Native communities. Ultimately, the Walker removed the piece.

Related: Indigenous artists give Minnesota a map makeover with Dakota/Lakota worldview

Since then, the museum has taken steps toward repair and expanded its collection of Indigenous artists. White Hawk’s “Love Language” offers a gesture of healing. The works invite viewers into experiences of connection and collaboration, showing how art can challenge conventions, honor histories and open paths toward new understanding.

“Dyani White Hawk: Love Language” runs through Feb. 15, 2026, at the Walker Art Center, 725 Vineland Pl., Minneapolis, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. Wed., Fri., & Sat., 10 a.m. – 9 p.m. Thursdays, ($18). Admission is free Thursdays beginning at 5 p.m. and on the first Saturday of the month. 

Also of note: The Walker will stage “Tiago Rodrigues: By Heart,” by Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues, on Tuesday, Oct. 28, and Wednesday, Oct. 29, at 7:30 p.m. ($25-$40). The performance includes 10 audience members invited on stage to learn a sonnet, interspersed with the playwright/solo performer’s musings on memory and language. More information here. 

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