Exhibition
This major solo exhibition by Diné artist Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994, Na’nízhoozhí [Gallup, New Mexico]) brings together his textile, sculpture, video, and performance practices. Made from synthetic and natural materials sourced from traditional and hyperreal sources, these artworks invite viewers’ touch while raising questions about the valuation of Indigenous art, culture, and labor.
On September 3, The Bell opens ojo|-|ólǫ́, a major solo exhibition by Diné artist Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994, Na’nízhoozhí [Gallup, New Mexico]) that brings together his textile, sculpture, sound, video, and performance practices. A trained weaver, Riege incorporates customary Diné practices into his production of monumental soft sculptures and weavings that reference Diné mythology, the history of settler trading posts inside and adjacent to the Navajo Nation, and the notion of “authenticity” as a value marker of Indigenous art and craft. Made from synthetic and natural materials sourced from traditional and hyperreal sources, these artworks invite viewers’ touch and play as much as they evoke challenging conversations about Indigenous sovereignty, the global art market, and the role of educational institutions in both disseminating and dispossessing knowledge about Indigenous art and cultures.
Developed in partnership between The Bell / Brown Arts Institute and the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, ojo|-|ólǫ́ brings together Riege’s work across media in his largest solo exhibition to date. To create these new artworks, Riege conducted material research with the Navajo collections held by Brown University’s Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology in 2023 and the University of Washington’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture in 2024. The resulting new body of work – from large-scale jewelry and weaving tools to weavings made from unexpected materials– embraces infidelity to colonial archives while celebrating the ancestral knowledges and traditions of labor contained within Indigenous-made objects. At different moments during the run of the exhibition, Riege and other performers will activate these artworks with live, durational performances, to invite caring yet critical interrogations of the ways Indigeneity is displayed in museum settings.
As an extension of Riege’s collage-based practice and iterative approach to artmaking, the exhibition will include Navajo collection objects from the Haffenreffer alongside items from Riege’s personal archive, including a selection of his sketches and collages. The resulting non-hierarchical display blurs lines between past and present, private and public, and real and fake, animating a story of cultural continuity as a living and dynamic process.
Ultimately, ojo|-|ólǫ́ invites a collective reflection into the practices of university campus museums and other storied institutions that have collected Indigenous art and ancestors, while simultaneously forwarding a call for Indigenous cultural resurgence in the present and towards the future.
All events are free and open to the public.
Thursday, September 18, 5:30-8 PM | Opening celebration with performance
Thursday, October 9 & Friday, October 10, 2025 | Artists' convening
Eric-Paul Riege (Diné) is a weaver and fiber artist working in collage, durational performance, installation, woven sculpture, and wearable art. Using weaving as both means and metaphor to tell hybrid tales that interlace stories from Diné spirituality with his own interpretations and cosmology, he understands his artworks as animate and mobile. His practice pays homage and links him to generations of weavers in his family that aids him in generating spaces of sanctuary. Riege’s recent solo exhibitions include iiZiiT [3]: RIEGE Jewelry + Supply at Canal Projects in New York (2025), Hammer Projects: Eric Paul Riege at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2022–2023), and Hólǫ́—it xistz at the Institute of Contemporary Art Miami (2019). His recent group exhibitions include 24th Biennale of Sydney in Australia (2024), Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination at Hessel Museum of ArtNY (2023), Prospect.5 Triennial in New Orleans (2022), the Toronto Biennial of Art (2022), and SITElines Biennial, presented by Site Santa Fe (2018). He holds a BFA in Art Studio and Ecology from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque. His work is collected by Forge Project and ICA Miami, among others. He is represented by Bockley Gallery (MN) and STARS Gallery (LA). Riege is a member of the Charcoal Streaked Division of the Red Running Into the Water clan. He was born and is based in Na’nízhoozhí [Gallup, New Mexico].
Eric-Paul Riege: ojo|-|ólǫ́ is curated by Thea Quiray Tagle, PhD, Associate Curator at the The Bell / Brown Arts Institute and Nina Bozicnik, Senior Curator at the Henry Art Gallery. The exhibition is co-presented by The Bell / Brown Arts Institute, Brown University, and the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, with support from the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown and the UW Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. The exhibition will be on view at The Bell from September 3 - December 7, 2025 and will travel with a new iteration opening at the Henry Art Gallery from March - August 2026.
The project is made possible at Brown by the generous support from The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, and anonymous donors.
The exhibition team at the Brown Arts Institute includes Ian Budish, Exhibitions Installation Manager; Kate Hao, Curatorial Coordinator; Kate Kraczon, Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator; Preparators Naushon Hale and Eddie Villanueva; and Nicole Wholean, University Curator and Registrar.