Overview
For the 2025 edition of The Armory Show, Hales is delighted to present recent and historic works by Kay WalkingStick, Virginia Jaramillo, Shelley Niro, Tuli Mekondjo, Jordan Ann Craig and Andrea Geyer.
 
Kay WalkingStick (b. 1935 Syracuse, NY) is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, she has Cherokee/Anglo heritage. She received a BFA from Beaver College (now Arcadia University) Glenside, PA in 1959 and an MFA from the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, NY in 1975. She lives and works in Pennsylvania. Over a career spanning six decades, WalkingStick’s practice has focused on the American Landscape and its metaphorical signifificances to Native Americans and people across the world. WalkingStick draws on formal modernist painterly traditions as well as the Native American experience to create works that connect the immediacy of the physical world with the spiritual. Five major paintings by WalkingStick were included in the 60th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia in 2024. Her solo exhibition, Kay WalkingStick / Hudson River School originated at the New York Historical (2023-2024) and traveled to the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, MA (2024-2025).
 

Virginia Jaramillo (b. 1939, El Paso, Texas) studied at Otis Art Institute, Los Angeles, from 1958-61. Jaramillo lives and works in New York. Born in El Paso, Texas, Jaramillo spent her formative years in California before moving to Europe and settling in New York City in late 1960s. Central to a career spanning nearly six decades is Jaramillo’s drive to express materially our sensory perceptions of space and time in what she describes as ‘an aesthetic investigation which seeks to translate into visual terms the mental structural patterns we all superimpose on our world.’ Whether creating bold abstract paintings, sculptural mixed media compositions or meticulously formed handmade paper works, Jaramillo has forged a unique voice, experimenting with material and process to pursue her ongoing explorations of human perception of reality. The fifirst major retrospective exhibition of Jaramillo’s work, Virginia Jaramillo: Principle of Equivalence, was on view at the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art (2023), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2024-25) and traveled to the Bechtler Museum of Modern Art in 2025.

 

Shelley Niro (b. 1954, Niagara Falls, New York) is a multi-disciplinary artist and a member of the Turtle Clan of the Kanyen’kehà:ka (Mohawk) Nation, from the Six Nations of the Grand River territory. She lives and works in Brantford, Ontario, Canada. In an oeuvre spanning four decades, Niro has developed an inflfluential and visionary practice that foregrounds the representation of indigenous people, their history, and present-day experience, often centering the stories of women. Her practice delves into the timeless cultural knowledge and generational histories of her Haudenosaunee community - the preservation of tradition manifests in her work in material, aesthetic and conceptual ways. Niro’s fifirst major retrospective Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch was fifirst presented at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY, USA in 2023 and is now on view at the Remai Modern, Saskatoon, SK, Canada, the fififth and fifinal stop on its international tour.

 

Tuli Mekondjo (b. 1982, Angola) is a Namibian artist, whose richly multifaceted practice considers the sociohistorical context of Namibia as a site to re-evaluate and consider ideas around ancestry and identity. Mekondjo lives and works in Windhoek, Namibia. Known for her mixed media and embroidered paintings, Mekondjo’s rigorous practice is a pursuit to connect with and honor her heritage. Her practice navigates feelings of displacement, having spent her childhood in refugee camps. Sensitive explorations of history and ancestry allow Mekondjo to address, question, and heal parts of this past, deftly weaving personal and collective trauma with beauty, nature and optimism. Mekondjo’s work has been featured in the Biennale de Dakar (2024) and Stellenbosch Triennale (2025); her fifirst solo exhibition in Switzerland opened at Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland in 2025.

 

Jordan Ann Craig (b. 1992 San Jose, CA, USA) lives and works in Pojoaque Valley, New Mexico. Craig is a Northern Cheyenne artist known for vibrant and often densely composed paintings which are characterized by a dynamic exploration and interpretation of Northern Cheyenne and Cheyenne visual culture. Incorporating vivid colors, recurring patterns, and interwoven forms situated in grids, Craig’s work explores and celebrates her Native ancestry, posing questions about the languages of modern abstract painting and the relationship to both historic and contemporary indigenous culture. In 2025 Craig had a solo exhibition, My Way Home at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts and she is recently the subject of a traveling solo exhibition, it takes a long time to stay here, originating at the Block Museum, Northwestern University, IL (2025), which opened the 15th of August, 2025 at the Newcomb Art Museum, Tulane University, LA.

 

Andrea Geyer (b. 1971, Freiburg, Germany) studied photography and fifilm design at the Fachhochschule Bielefeld and fifine art at the Braunschweig University of Art, both in Germany. Geyer lives and works in New York. Geyer’s work ranges across multiple media, incorporating text, photography, painting, sculpture, video and performance. It explores the complex politics of time, in the context of specifific social and political situations, cultural institutions and historical events. In her series, Constellations (2017 - ongoing), Geyer depicts reimagined portraits of some of the inflfluential women who held salons in the US, Europe and beyond. Inspired by Joseph Alber’s “Structural

Constellations”, executed in 1950s and embodying his experiments with visual ambiguity, Geyer’s Constellations map the recognizable pattern of presence and absence of these women, reintroducing ways of looking that allow their recognition today. Geyer has had recent solo presentations at the Carnegie Museum of Art, PA (2023-2024), Gropius Bau, Berlin (2024), and Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art, NY (2024-2025), and this fall will be included in ECHO DELAY REVERB at the Palais de Tokyo, Paris, curated by Naomi Beckwith.