Dana Claxton

Over the past three decades Dana Claxton has become widely known for an expansive multidisciplinary approach to art making that encompasses film, photography, single and multichannel video installation and performance art.

A member of Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation, Claxton’s work engages with Indigenous heritage, culture, and knowledge challenging the ways Indigenous histories and identities have been represented and appropriated. Drawing on contemporary technologies and different aesthetic strategies—from popular culture to post-conceptual photography, Claxton celebrates Indigenous beauty, world views and spirituality while examining the ongoing impact of colonialism on contemporary life.

Claxton has received the Eiteljorg Fellowship (2007), Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award (2019), YWCA Women of Distinction Award (2019), Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts (2020), the Scotiabank Photography Award (2020), and the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts (2023). Fringing the Cube, her solo survey exhibition, was mounted at the Vancouver Art Gallery (2018) and the body of work Headdress premiered at the inaugural Toronto Biennial of Art, Toronto ON (2019). She is the winner of Best Experimental film at the IMAGINATIVE Film and Media Arts Festival (2013). She is a Professor in the Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory with the University of British Columbia.