Kay WalkingStick at Site Santa Fe

Kay WalkingStick’s Feet Series Arrangement (1972) and Gray Apron are included in Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969, on view at Site Santa Fe, NM, USA through 7 September.

The exhibition is the first large-scale exhibition to center performance and theater as an origin point for the development of contemporary art by Native American, First Nations, Métis, Inuit, and Alaska Native artists, tracing the role of Native artists in the self-determination era and exploring themes of collectivity, resistance, and the representation of the Native body.

Feet Series Arrangement consists of six panels, each featuring a pair of silhouetted feet on solid planes of colour. WalkingStick later shared that the feet are portraits of herself and her husband. While the various arrangements evoke different emotions through gesture and colour, the artist explained that the work is primarily concerned with how colours interact and with exploring the spatial dimensions of colour.

Created while WalkingStick was studying at Pratt Institute, Gray Apron (1974) is one of a series of representational studies of an artist’s apron suspended from the three points of an isosceles triangle. The apron’s iconic shape, particularly the curved negative space formed by the draped fabric, inspired the arc, a form WalkingStick would return to throughout her career.

Image 1: Kay WalkingStick, Feet Series Arrangement, 1972. Tia Collection
Image 2 & 3: Installation image from Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination since 1969, Site Santa Fe, NM, USA, 5 June - 7 September 2026. Photo by Brad Trone