Adam Kleinman's review of Soft Power at SFMOMA, Do Artists Have ‘Soft Power’ To Create Political Change?, was published in Frieze on November 28, 2019. You can view the article here:
https://frieze.com/article/do-artists-have-soft-power-create-political-change
Adam Kleinman's description of my work:
"The theme of return is also present in Tanya Lukin Linklater’s Flat vessels made by the hands of our grandmothers that we discern and decipher as potential messages of repair (2019), an unveiling of Alutiiq sewing pouches on loan from the storage vaults of the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology. Alongside the bags, which have been placed in a low vitrine framed by a living room couch, screens a silent video, The treaty is in the body (2017), in which Omaskêko Cree knowledge keeper Jennifer Wabano leads a discussion with several women and girls on the history of deals between Indigenous peoples and North American governments – or so the wall text tells us, as we are denied access to their words, and must instead focus on their gestures. This intimate mediation on heritage and the uses of memory as a form of resistance is possibly the most stirring work in the show."
Karen Rosenberg's review of Soft Power at SFMOMA for the New York Times,
‘Soft Power’: When Political Art Walks a Very Fine Line, was published on December 19, 2019. You can view the article here:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/18/arts/design/soft-power-sfmoma.html
Karen Rosenberg's description of my work:
"Other examples abound of women’s groups as keepers of tradition or vital information: soft power as female power, historically speaking. Tanya Lukin Linklater’s video “The treaty is in the body,” invites viewers into a gathering of women from the Omaskêko Cree nation as they explore the treaty relationships that are fundamental to their culture. The work is silent, but its many intimate gestures — one woman braids another’s hair — resound with shared understanding."