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Erica Lord

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Erica Lord
Works by Erica Lord in Portraits/Portraits: Erica Lord and Monty Little in the JoAnn & Bob Balzer Alumni Gallery, Institute of American Indian Arts
Born1978 (age 46–47)
Nenana, Alaska
NationalityNenana Native Association, American
Known forPerformance art, photography
Notable work
  • Un/Defined Self-Portrait Series (2005), C-prints of variable dimension
  • (Untitled) I Tan To Look More Native (2006), digital inkjet, variable dimensions
  • Artifact Piece, Revisited, (2009), performance and mixed media installation
Websiteericalord.com

Erica Lord (born 1978)[1] is an Alaska Native artist, based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, who identifies herself as a mixed-race "cultural limbo."[1][2]

Life

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Born to a Finnish-American mother and Iñupiaq/Athabascan father, Erica Lord grew up traveling between her father's village in Nenana, Alaska and her mother's home community in Michigan.[1][3] Nenana, located in Interior Alaska, has a large Native population of 378 people, according to the 2010 census. Her mother lived in a mostly white town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Lord's father was an activist in the Indian movement.[3] Her personal experience perpetually moving between various geographic places inspires her work's interest in themes of displacement, cultural identity and cultural limbo.[2][4] She is a citizen of the Nenana Native Association, a federally recognized Alaska Native tribe.[5]

She received a B.A. in liberal arts and studio arts from Carleton College in 2001 and completed her M.F.A. in sculpture and photography at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006.[6][7]

Identity

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Career

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Multiple Myeloma Burden Strap, DNA/RNA Microarray Analysis (2022) at the Renwick Gallery in 2023

Erica Lord has been an exhibiting artist since 2004, with her work having been featured in galleries and museums across the United States from Santa Fe to New York.[8] She has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at the DeVos Museum of Art (Marquette, MI) and the Alaska Native Arts Foundation Gallery (Anchorage, AK), as well as in group exhibitions such as the Havana Biennial and the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native American Art.[9] She currently teaches at the Institute of American Indian Arts where she has contributed to building some of the school's first MFA classes to launch their MFA program. During the pandemic she continued to work on her most recent project called “Burden Strap” inspired by traditional beaded burden straps and beading them in the pattern of DNA and RNA strands of diseases that affect Native American people disproportionately.[10] From this series, “Leukemia Burden Strap” and “Multiple Myeloma Burden Strap” were featured pieces in the Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023.[11] Due to her profound work on Native American issues, she was one of thirteen feature artists in Self-Determined: A Contemporary Survey of Native and Indigenous Artists in 2022.[10]

Erica Lord was a participant in the Smithsonian Archives of American Art Pandemic Oral History Project in September 2020. The oral history series recorded responses to the global pandemic across the American art world. Conducted virtually, the Pandemic Oral History Project featured eighty-five short-form interviews with a diverse group of artists, teachers, curators, and administrators, including Erica Lord.

Notable exhibitions

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Selected works

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Native American Land Reclamation Project (2000)

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One of Lord's earliest projects, in 2000, focuses on her Native American roots. In her installation Native American Land Reclamation Project, she employs mixed media objects to bring awareness to the repeated cycle of broken U.S. treaties, specifically with Native Americans from 1778 to 1886.[8] Displayed at the Institute of American Indian Arts, the installation occupied a 16" x 16" room with mirrors plastered to the walls and floor.[8] Hanging from the ceiling are dozens of cut-up red stripes (the blood) from the United States' flag. Lord then wrapped the cloth and filled it with dirt from various villages, reservations, and tribal lands from all over the U.S. To show the repetition of history, Lord utilized the mirrors to multiply the prayer ties.[19] In an interview, Lord explains, "I started thinking about what in my culture has been repeated over and over. [...] I wanted to create a piece that both acknowledged our history– and stressing both oppressor & survivor, Native & non-Native, it's a shared history".[20]

Un/Defined Self-Portrait Series (2005), C-prints of variable dimension

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Untitled (Tattooed Arms) (2007), Digital Photographs

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Erica Lord photographs two tattoos: one on the inner side of her left forearm titled “Enrollment number” and one on her right forearm titled “Blood Quantum”.[21] These two tattoos criticize the Native American image created by modern society.[22] Lord's tattoo titled “Blood Quantum”, after the blood quantum laws, is a visual criticism on the United States government control on all Native American heritage.[23] The tattoo “Enrollment Number” is the number given to Erica Lord, and all Native Americans, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.[24] Placing this number on her arm, Erica Lord draws direct comparison to Holocaust survivors and their experiences to the United States expansion and relocation of Native Americans.[25]

The Tanning Project: I Tan To Look More Native (2006), Digital Inkjet, variable dimensions

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“The Tanning Project” (2004–2007) is a four-image photographic series in which Lord applied text to her skin and then used tanning bed sessions to darken her skin, leaving the text-covered areas with a much lighter skin tone. The text and pose varies in each photograph: "Indian Looking," "Halfbreed," "Colonize Me" and "I Tan to Look More Native" and the title of each individual photograph makes use of these words. In her analysis of this series of work, Colleen Kim Daniher describes tanning, or darkening the skin through sun exposure, as a ritual of white beautification, but also points out other contexts for the word tanning, claiming the artist is “cleverly punning off of the traditional practice of transforming animal rawhide into leather through a process of skinning, liming, drying, and stretching.” [26] The words I Tan to Look More Native critically disrupt viewers’ ideas about cultural purity and unrealistic expectations of what a Native person is supposed to look like, and the ways Native individuals engage with those expectations through their own bodily choices.[27]

Artifact Piece, Revisited, (2009), performance and mixed media installation

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On April 3, 2008, Erica Lord arrived at the George Gustav Heye Center, the National Museum of the American Indian, at the Smithsonian Museum in New York, for a performance/installation titled Artifact Piece, Revisited. This piece was a reenactment of American artist James Luna's Artifact Piece, first performed at the San Diego Museum of Man in 1987. When Lord entered the gallery, she lay down in a case, closed her eyes, and allowed museum visitors to examine her over the next few hours. Captions placed throughout the display identified parts of her, such as her painted toenails. There were two glass cases on either side of the box where Lord laid, that contained clothing and her personal possessions. One side contained Alaskan Native dress, and the other contained modern clothing. This first performance of Artifact Piece, Revisited was followed by lectures and a discussion with Lord herself. The artist returned to the museum to perform the piece again twice over the next two days. Using her body as a conversation piece, Lord critiqued the displaying of Native people in museum exhibits and the display of women's bodies.[28]

References

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  1. ^ a b c "Erica Lord: One of the featured artists in Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023". Smithsonian American Art Museum. Archived from the original on April 25, 2025. Retrieved August 11, 2024.
  2. ^ a b Stanley, Emily Innes (January 7, 2025). "Erica Lord is the Next Speaker in the Mudd Lecture Series". The Columns. Washington and Lee University. Archived from the original on July 20, 2025. Retrieved October 31, 2025.
  3. ^ a b Smith, Paul Chaat (2009). Everything You Know about Indians Is Wrong. University of Minnesota Press. pp. 32. ISBN 9780816656011. OCLC 277201109. Retrieved October 31, 2025 – via Internet Archive.
  4. ^ "Erica Lord". ericalord.com. Archived from the original on March 27, 2025. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  5. ^ "Erica Lord featured in upcoming Renwick Invitational 2023 at the Renwick Gallery". Artdaily.com. June 13, 2023. Archived from the original on January 25, 2025. Retrieved August 30, 2023.
  6. ^ Lord, Erica (2009). Williams, Maria Sháa Tláa (ed.). The Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture, Politics. Duke University Press. pp. 309. ISBN 9780822390831. OCLC 643102512. Retrieved October 31, 2025 – via Internet Archive.
  7. ^ "Events - Erica Lord: Simulacrum & Subversion". DeVos Art Museum. 2010. Archived from the original on April 20, 2025. Retrieved October 31, 2025.
  8. ^ a b c Daniher, Colleen Kim (2014). "The Pose as Interventionist Gesture: Erica Lord and Decolonizing the Proper Subject of Memory". Hemispheric Institute. Archived from the original on March 25, 2023. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  9. ^ a b "Erica Lord - C.V." (PDF). Erica Lord. Archived (PDF) from the original on October 31, 2025. Retrieved March 8, 2015.
  10. ^ a b "Oral history interview with Erica Lord". Archives of American Art. Smithsonian Institution. September 9, 2020. Archived from the original on July 10, 2025. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  11. ^ "Sharing Honors and Burdens: Renwick Invitational 2023". Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. Spring 2022. Archived from the original on March 25, 2025. Retrieved May 24, 2023.
  12. ^ Ault, Alicia (November 12, 2021). "Six Native Artists and Their Works Receive Major Recognition". Smithsonian. Archived from the original on January 22, 2025. Retrieved January 23, 2023.
  13. ^ "Exhibitions: Gina Adams I Maajiigin wa'aw akiing miinawaa (Begin This World Again) I Merritt Johnson I Recent Work I + work by Erica Lord". Accola Griefen Gallery. 2020. Archived from the original on October 4, 2024. Retrieved March 26, 2021.
  14. ^ "The New Red Order Presents: The Savage Philosophy of Endless Acknowledgement". Whitney Museum. 2018. Archived from the original on August 18, 2025. Retrieved March 26, 2021.
  15. ^ Tsinhnahjinnie, Hulleah; Passalacqua, Veronica, eds. (2006). Our People, Our Land, Our Images: International Indigenous Photographers. Davis, CA: C.N. Gorman Museum, University of California, Davis. p. 64. ISBN 1-59714-057-0. OCLC 71790035.
  16. ^ Fairfield, Douglas (July 10, 2009). "Art in Review". The Santa Fe New Mexican. pp. PA.20. ProQuest 331628592.
  17. ^ Sanchez, Joseph M.; Alteen, Glenn (2009). Badland: Rebecca Belmore, Lori Blondeau, Bonnie Devine, Erica Lord, June 26, 2009-January 31, 2010 (Exhibition catalog). Museum of Contemporary Native Arts. OCLC 434467669.
  18. ^ "Native Artists Challenge Landscape Traditions in 'Off the Map'". Seminole Tribune. March 8, 2015.
  19. ^ Titterington, David (July 24, 2020). "Indigenous American Flags". Archived from the original on October 31, 2025. Retrieved April 9, 2021 – via Medium.
  20. ^ "Erica Lord - Inupiaq / Athabaskan". Contemporary North American Indigenous Artists. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  21. ^ Composing(media) = composing(embodiment) : bodies, technologies, writing, the teaching of writing. Arola, Kristin L., Wysocki, Anne Frances, 1956-. Logan, Utah: Utah State University Press. 2012. ISBN 978-0-87421-881-7. OCLC 812342876.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)
  22. ^ Carnahan, Alanna (May 2019). "FROM NATIVE MODERNISM TO NATIVE FEMINISM: UNDERSTANDINGCONTEMPORARY NATIVE AMERICAN PRAXIS" (PDF). From Native Modernism to Native Feminism: Understanding Contemporary Native American Praxis.
  23. ^ Daniher, Colleen Kim. "The Pose as Interventionist Gesture: Erica Lord and Decolonizing the Proper Subject of Memory". hemisphericinstitute.org. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  24. ^ Dunham, Mike (August 2, 2009). "Nenana artist grapples with ethnic identity". Anchorage Daily News. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  25. ^ "The Pose as Interventionist Gesture: Erica Lord and Decolonizing the Proper Subject of Memory". hemisphericinstitute.org. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
  26. ^ "e11.1 Essay - The Pose as Interventionist Gesture: Erica Lord and Decolonizing the Proper Subject of Memory". hemi.nyu.edu. Retrieved April 9, 2021.
  27. ^ "e11.1 Essay - The Pose as Interventionist Gesture: Erica Lord and Decolonizing the Proper Subject of Memory". hemi.nyu.edu. Retrieved June 6, 2019.
  28. ^ Evans, Lara M. (2010). "Artifact Piece, Revisited". In Blomberg, Nancy (ed.). Action and Agency: Advancing the Dialogue on Native Performance Art. DENVER: Denver Art Museum. pp. 62–87. ISBN 978-0914738657.
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