Webster’s Kooyumjian Gallery Spotlights Projects by Two Native American Photographers
February 13, 2025
Webster University’s Kooyumjian Gallery will feature projects by Native American photographers Matika Wilbur and Simiya Sudduth that celebrate Native American culture. Both exhibits will be on display Feb. 10 through April 22. Sudduth, a 2020 Webster alum, also will appear at a reception on Webster’s main campus on Friday, Feb. 28 and discuss their project “The Confluence Tarot.”
“Within this series, Simiya explained the work explores the histories, cultures, systems, institutions, landscapes, and diverse living beings of the Mississippi River watershed—past, present, and future,” said Kooyumjian Gallery Director Kristina Richards about “The Confluence Tarot.” “The work draws heavy inspiration from the iconic Rider-Waite-Smith tarot card deck. ‘The Confluence Tarot’ series, along with the artist's broader creative practice, serves as an offering to the Land, Ancestors, and Beings within the spaces of the Great Mississippi River.”
Sudduth is a Black and Indigenous (Choctaw and Chickasaw) mother, multidisciplinary artist and art educator. They maintain a fluid creative practice that primarily manifests in the realm of public art and social practice. Their work explores the intersections of healing, ecology, social justice and spirituality. Their expansive creative practice ranges from digital illustration, designing and painting murals to experimental sound healing performances and the work serves as a provocation for both personal and collective healing.
Wilbur’s project, titled “Project 652: Changing the Way We See Native America” focuses on an expansive exploration of the numerous Native American tribes in the United States. Wilbur is of the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes.
“In 2012, Matika Wilbur sold everything in her Seattle apartment and set out on a Kickstarter-funded pursuit to visit, engage, and photograph people from what were then the 562 federally recognized Native American Tribal Nations,” Richards explained of Matika's experience. “Over the next decade, she tells of travelling six hundred thousand miles across fifty states—from Seminole country (now known as the Everglades) to Inuit territory (now known as the Bering Sea)—to meet, interview, and photograph hundreds of Indigenous people.”
The body of work Wilbur created serves to counteract the one-dimensional and archaic stereotypes of Native people in mainstream media and offers justice to the richness, diversity, and lived experiences of Indigenous people. The culmination of this decade-long art and storytelling endeavor, “Project 562” is a peerless, sweeping, and moving love letter to Indigenous Americans, containing hundreds of stunning portraits and compelling personal narratives of contemporary Native people—all photographed in clothing, poses, and locations of their choosing. The project’s narratives touch on personal and cultural identity as well as issues of media representation, sovereignty, faith, family, the protection of sacred sites, subsistence living, traditional knowledge-keeping, land stewardship, language preservation, advocacy, education, the arts, and more. A vital contribution from an incomparable artist, “Project 562” inspires, educates, and changes the way the viewers see Native America.
Established in 1988, The Kooyumjian Gallery is a nonprofit gallery dedicated to photography and media arts. The Gallery exhibits a wide range of photographic works by student, local, national and international artists and photographers. Newly remodeled and expanded in 2022, The Kooyumjian Gallery provides a formal gallery space for presenting exhibitions, fostering young photographers and showcasing professional and student works.
The Gallery and Gallery events are free and open to the public with free parking in University Lots. The Gallery is open daily from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. except for holidays. It is in Webster’s Sverdrup Complex at 8300 Big Bend Blvd, St. Louis, MO 63119 on the second floor of the west wing. Upon reaching the exterior entry doors, please call Public Safety at 314-246-6911 and they will buzz you in.