Chiara Giovando
Selected Projects
2025, Institute of Contempoaray Art Santa Fe, August 9 – October 30
Reservation for Irony: Native Wit and Contemporary Realities explored how satire and humor serve as powerful tools in contemporary Native art and storytelling. Through painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, the artists traversed the absurd, embraced satire, and employed irony to navigate layered identities, confront colonial narratives, and reflect on social and political realities. They wield wit with precision, carving through inherited myths, historical erasure, and political distortion. Comedy became a strategy of resistance and revelation, cutting close to truth when language falters.
The exhibition brought together a leading group of Indigenous artists, including Tony Abeyta, George Alexander, Rick Bartow, David Bradley, T.C. Cannon, Del Curfman, Harry Fonseca, Nicholas Galanin, Richard Glazer Danay, Bob Haozous, Glen La Fontaine, Geralyn Montano, Kent Monkman, Cara Romero, Diego Romero, Fritz Scholder, Kathleen Wall, and Nico Williams, among others.
The artists implemented distinct yet interconnected approaches. Kent Monkman’s flamboyant, gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, uses camp to subvert art-historical tropes, reasserting Indigenous presence with biting theatrical flair. Cara Romero blends traditional iconography with contemporary aesthetics to evoke the persistence and evolution of Indigenous identity. Nicholas Galanin’s contribution, part of his I Think It Goes Like This… series, invokes both the opening line of a joke and a poetic metaphor for the fractured work of cultural reconstruction. Together, their works opened a conversation about how humor, a vital tool in Indigenous storytelling, teaching, and resilience, can serve as an act of resistance and remembering.
The exhibition extended into two major public programs. Presented as an independent kickoff to the 2025 SWAIA weekend, Indigenous Humor as Resistance brought Kent Monkman, Cara Romero, and Nicholas Galanin into a live conversation moderated by Tony Abeyta. The panel explored how satire and irony function as nuanced forms of critique within Indigenous visual and cultural practices, challenging imposed narratives and opening new space for dialogue. Presented in person and by livestream, the event expanded the exhibition’s consideration of how humor can expose complexity, shift cultural perspective, and unsettle dominant histories.
The opening reception was followed by With All Due Respect: Stand-Up with Ricardo Cate & Friends, a one-night comedy show hosted by cartoonist and comedian Ricardo Cate. The event brought stand-up comedy squarely into the frame of contemporary art, where performance meets critique. Through unapologetic and incisive comedy, Cate and his guests took on politics, identity, and the gloriously mundane. The program extended the exhibition’s central premise into a live encounter, allowing humor to operate directly as social commentary, shared recognition, and resistance.