Dia Chelsea museum marks latest collaboration with artist Duane Linklater

The Dia Chelsea museum’s “Duane Linklater: 12 + 2,” an exhibition of film, sculpture, music, and dance from the Indigenous artist and filmmaker, will be on view until January 24 and feature a public tour on January 10 and January 24.

The exhibition is an artistic reflection of the North American buffalo, examining the animal’s behaviors, historic and future resurgence, and the physical traces left on its body as it moves through varied landscapes.

At the core of the installation is a circular structure scored into the floor of the museum, uniting the institution’s two galleries. The form holds cosmological meaning in Linklater’s Omaskêko Cree culture while also referencing the number of poles traditionally used to build a teepee. Seven large-scale sculptures depict buffalo in gentle and forceful movements that have, from the artist’s point-of-view, shaped North American ecosystems over centuries. 

“Buffalo wallowing has shaped, marked, and, in turn, regenerated the land from time immemorial. 12 + 2 is the cosmology within which they act,” Linklater (Omaskêko Ininiwak from Moose Cree First Nation) said in a statement released by the museum.

“12 + 2” marks five years of collaboration between Linklater and the Dia Chelsea and represents the artist’s first large-scale commission in the United States. The museum is also concurrently featuring a second film-centric Linklater exhibition running until February 21.

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