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museum exhibitions calendar_today Tuesday, May 5, 2026

Dyani White Hawk: LISTEN at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University

Dyani White Hawk's eight-channel video installation "LISTEN" (2020–ongoing) is on view at the Nasher Museum of Art at Duke University. The work features Indigenous women speaking in their native languages on their tribal homelands, with no subtitles or explanatory text, encouraging viewers to physically move closer to each screen to hear and engage with the speakers' voices and surrounding environments.

The installation matters because it challenges conventional museum practices of providing extensive interpretive context, instead centering Indigenous languages and perspectives on their own terms. By making comprehension dependent on proximity and attention, White Hawk invites viewers to experience language as embodied, relational, and inseparable from land—offering a model for decolonizing how art institutions present Indigenous voices.