PROVIDENCE, R. I. — Sauntering from the humid Providence streets into Brown University’s David Winton Bell Gallery (the Bell), the cool contrast of Diné artist Eric-Paul Riege’s hyper-modern black, gray, and white palette will surprise you. But the coup de grâce for me, as a textile artist, is Riege’s employment of synthetic materials from retailers like Joann Fabrics and Amazon. The show’s curator, Thea Quiray Tagle, encouraged me to touch the works while expounding on the maintenance guidelines Riege provided — hairspray the fur and lint roll the orbs and discs made of wool and felt.
In the vestibule hangs a totemic figure made from black and white plush fabric, with braided tentacles cascading in aeolian suspension from a white, spherical center. Flanking it is Riege’s “ojo|-|ólǫ́,” the immersive installation that lends the exhibition its title. The decision not to assign individual monikers to his textiles, sculptures, collages, and videos is deliberate. Collectivity, agency, and movement stand at the core of Riege’s philosophy — his sales contracts include clauses that allow him to modify works for new projects. Their monumental scale, meanwhile, is part of a broader effort by Native artists to rebuke the ways their work has historically been consumed by non-Native audiences (think Southwestern trading posts) and redefine what monuments can be — transforming Diné mythology and weaving and metal work into something unparalleled and playful.
This work about Indigenous resilience and community sits within an institution that recently saw one of its few Native professors, Adrienne Keene (Cherokee), step down from her role, citing the university’s overwhelming Whiteness among her reasons for leaving. Against this backdrop, Riege’s emphasis on community and collectivity feels both more urgent and more poignant.
Detail of installation view of “ojo|-|ólǫ́” (2025)
Riege’s hypnotic tableau of hanging and stationary figures, jewelry, regalia, and practical artifacts induces the effect of being dropped into a mise en scène of a Diné pictorial weaving. Though many hanging works appear to be static art objects, they retain a functional essence often central to Native artistic practices. One striking entity is a wall-mounted hollow effigy adorned in elaborate regalia — a tufted and horned crown, its face and body shields evoking buffalo bone chokers — affixed to a roughly hewn wooden ladder. At its feet lie disembodied, fringed, and bejeweled arms and a talisman made of a wool-woven basket emblazoned with the cardinal directions — a symbol in Diné cosmology representing Na’ashje’ii Asdzaa, or Spider Woman, the weaver of life. The vessel-like quality of these elements implies they are filled and employed for ceremonial use; works of this kind are typical in Riege’s rite-like performance pieces, which are ancillary to all his exhibitions.
What I find chillingly resonant is Riege’s emphasis on the many hands involved in the making of his practice. The artist’s father will stuff stygian craft store pumpkins, turning them into abstract orbs, while his aunt coordinates and delivers rare shipments of dyed black leather. During the act of weaving, Riege says he often contemplates the Diné shepherds who produce his wool. The hands of makers confer value upon their sundry goods.
Detail of installation view of “ojo|-|ólǫ́” (2025)
Riege’s operational principles flout norms of art as hermitic praxis. There is no space for the trope of the solitary, troubled male artist in the Native community, where well-being is an intricately shared responsibility — a stark contrast to Western romanticism of artistic isolation and suffering. The nucleus of Diné society is a matriarchy of makers whose pedagogy instructs through direct action, where “like this” becomes a didactic refrain.
Honoring norms, this show also strays. A gargantuan turquoise and cream geometric weaving and stuffed silver fabric necklace references familiar Navajo design elements, but appurtenances also open a window to the private. See, for instance, a portrait of a young Riege in the arms of his great-grandmother — who lived to 106 — flanked by two God’s eye-like pictorial weavings with figures suspended in empty inlays. A wallpaper with a hair-tasseled lightbox motif containing other intimate pictures of the artist’s influences, memorabilia, and past works signals a more saleable direction to his career — raising questions about how sacred cultural elements translate into viably reproducible products.
Ultimately, Riege disrupts not only contemporary Native art but fine art on a major scale. He creates space for himself in an emerging enclave of contemporary artists, balancing gestures with historical modes and materials to redefine what monuments can be. While intransigence over material choices, or other such snobbery, may have caused the media to overlook his work previously, his recent Joan Mitchell Foundation award and a significant show at the Bell upend such snubs — even if they also reinforce the art world’s reliance on institutional validation — with ludic joy.
Installation view of “ojo|-|ólǫ́” (2025)
Detail of installation view of “ojo|-|ólǫ́” (2025)
Detail of installation view of “ojo|-|ólǫ́” (2025)
Detail of installation view of “ojo|-|ólǫ́” (2025)
Eric-Paul Riege: ojo|-|ólǫ́ continues at David Winton Bell Gallery ( List Art Building, Brown University, 64 College Street, Providence, Rhode Island) through December 7. The exhibition was co-organized by the Bell and Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, and curated by Thea Quiray Tagle and Nina Bozicnik. It will travel to Henry Art Gallery from March–August 2026.
