Whitehorse, Emmi

Faust Gallery

Emmi Whitehorse

b. 1957, Crownpoint, New Mexico  ·  Diné (Navajo Nation)

Emmi Whitehorse, a citizen of the Navajo Nation, has spent more than four decades translating the high desert of the American Southwest into a visual language entirely her own. Born in Crownpoint, New Mexico, she earned a Bachelor of Arts in Painting from the University of New Mexico in 1980 and returned to the university for a Master of Arts in 1982, concentrating in Printmaking with a minor in Art History.

“My paintings tell the story of knowing land over time—of being completely, microcosmically within a place.”

— Emmi Whitehorse

Whitehorse builds her paintings slowly. Across paper and canvas, she suspends loose, calligraphic marks—seeds, leaves, and half-remembered shapes—within soft, breathing fields of color, so that each surface reads less as a depiction of land than as the memory of standing within it. Nothing is fixed: her forms drift and reassemble, echoing terrain and weather that are themselves always in motion. Light shifts, space opens and closes, and color turns by degrees, and it is in these quiet transitions that the work lives. Underlying all of it is the Diné principle of Hózhó—a state of balance, beauty, and harmony among mind, body, and the natural world—which has guided her practice from the beginning.

Education

  • MA, Printmaking (major) and Art History (minor), University of New Mexico, 1982
  • BA, Painting, University of New Mexico, 1980

Selected Solo Exhibitions

  • Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art, Colorado (2006)
  • Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska (2001)
  • Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona (1997)
  • The Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico (1991)

Selected Group Exhibitions

  • La Biennale di Venezia: Stranieri Ovunque – Strangers Everywhere (2024)
  • The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (2023–2024)
  • Making Knowing: Craft in Art, 1950–2019, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2019–2022)
  • Celebrating Diversities in Art, Springfield Art Museum, Massachusetts (2012)
  • Modern Times – Kunst der Indianischen Moderne und Postmoderne, Galerieverein Leonberg, Germany (2011)
  • Into the Void: Abstract Art, Autry Museum of the American West, Los Angeles, California (2010)
  • Unlimited Boundaries: Dichotomy of Place in Contemporary Native American Art, Albuquerque Museum of Art, New Mexico (2007)
  • Off the Map, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, New York (2007)
  • Contemporary Art in New Mexico, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (1996)

Selected Public Collections

  • Brooklyn Museum of Art, Brooklyn, New York
  • Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
  • Denver Art Museum, Colorado
  • Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana
  • Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
  • Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey
  • Museum of Fine Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico
  • Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts
  • Tucson Museum of Art, Arizona
  • Westfälisches Museum, Münster, Germany
  • The Wheelwright Museum, Santa Fe, New Mexico
  • Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, New York

… among many others.