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Power 100

Most influential people in 2024 in the contemporary artworld

82

Nicholas Galanin

Artist - Working against colonial borders, land ownership and the complexities of identity

82 in 2024

  • 202482
  • 202391
  • 2022
  • 2021
  • 2020
  • 2019
  • 2018
  • 2017
  • 2016
  • 2015
  • 2014
  • 2013
  • 2012
  • 2011
  • 2010
  • 2009
  • 2008
  • 2007
  • 2006
Photo: Raven’s Tale Studio. Courtesy Nicholas Galanin and Peter Blum Gallery

Exist in the Width of a Knife’s Edge (2024), the suspended installation that was also the title of Galanin’s solo show at Baltimore Museum of Art this September, features 60 porcelain daggers that mimic the traditional tools of the Lingít tribe and are patterned with Russian ceramic designs (Galanin is Lingít and Unangaxˆ ; the latter’s Aleutian Islands are divided between US and Russian state control). Weaponry is a fitting motif for the artist: he has been uncompromising in his fight against the misappropriation of Indigenous visual culture and the collective amnesia towards the colonial crimes of the past. Such anger was unflinchingly disclosed in the red neon text work Galanin made for his exhibition, Interference Patterns, at SITE Santa Fe in January, which read, over a grid of doormats, ‘I’ve Composed a New National Anthem: Take a Knee and Scream Until You Can’t Breathe’. The howl is being heard. Galanin was also included in a dozen group shows this year, including the Public Art Abu Dhabi Biennial and the Toronto Biennial, and in April he received a Guggenheim Fellowship.

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