above: Kill the Corporate Monster , 2019 scratchboard by Allison Akootchook Warden.
Narrative Bio |
Allison Akootchook Warden is a tribal member of the Native Village of Kaktovik, an island in the Arctic Ocean and the home of 300 community members whom Warden deeply loves. She recently performed as part of the Kaktovik Dancers at Kiviq, a celebration with ceremony that brings in the New Year.
Warden knew she would be an artist at the age of five. By eight, her artistic accomplishments included songwriting and poetry, drawings, acting for stage and television, cello and singing with an Iñupiaq choir. In seventh grade, she performed a monologue in front of her entire middle school, before joining the NaaKaahidi theatre’s European tour immediately following high school.
Her most recent work, taigruaq is a collaboration with Greenlandic artist Aqqalu Berthelsen. It is a performance art piece entirely in Iñupiaq, looking into a dark future where the landscape is dominated by oil. It was performed at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art in 2022.
Her poem, we acknowledge ourselves was the featured poem in the 2022 land acknowledgement issue of Poetry Magazine. The poem gives a condensed history of the Kaktoviġmiut.
Warden was mentored by and performed with the late James Luna. She is the recipient of a 2019 United States Artist Fellowship in Traditional Arts. She understands her transdisciplinary art practice is part of the perpetuation of her Iñupiaq language and culture, and she incorporates her language in everything that she creates.
Warden is the recipient of a 2022 Art Matters Artist2Artist Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Art, a 2022 Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship (IAF) in Music, a 2018 Rasmuson IAF in New Genre, a 2018 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music and a 2015 Rasmuson IAF in Performance Art.
Warden knew she would be an artist at the age of five. By eight, her artistic accomplishments included songwriting and poetry, drawings, acting for stage and television, cello and singing with an Iñupiaq choir. In seventh grade, she performed a monologue in front of her entire middle school, before joining the NaaKaahidi theatre’s European tour immediately following high school.
Her most recent work, taigruaq is a collaboration with Greenlandic artist Aqqalu Berthelsen. It is a performance art piece entirely in Iñupiaq, looking into a dark future where the landscape is dominated by oil. It was performed at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art in 2022.
Her poem, we acknowledge ourselves was the featured poem in the 2022 land acknowledgement issue of Poetry Magazine. The poem gives a condensed history of the Kaktoviġmiut.
Warden was mentored by and performed with the late James Luna. She is the recipient of a 2019 United States Artist Fellowship in Traditional Arts. She understands her transdisciplinary art practice is part of the perpetuation of her Iñupiaq language and culture, and she incorporates her language in everything that she creates.
Warden is the recipient of a 2022 Art Matters Artist2Artist Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Art, a 2022 Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship (IAF) in Music, a 2018 Rasmuson IAF in New Genre, a 2018 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Fellowship in Music and a 2015 Rasmuson IAF in Performance Art.
Bio
Allison Akootchook Warden is an Iñupiaq poet, installation artist, and performance artist and a tribal member of the Native Village of Kaktovik. In 2022, her poem we acknowledge ourselves was featured in the Land Acknowledgements issue of Poetry Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review published her poem, portal traveler, and her poetry was part of Insidious Rising, a hyphen-labs project for Google Arts and Cultures. At the 2022 Time Based Arts Festival at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, she debuted taigruaq, a performance art piece with collaborator Aqqalu Berthelesen. She is the recipient of a 2019 United States Artist Fellowship in traditional arts, a 2022 Art Matters Artist2Artist Fellowship in interdisciplinary arts, a 2022 Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship in music composition, a 2018 Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship in new genre and a 2018 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship in music. She is currently working on an album, writing poetry and is scheduled to open her social practice installation The Inuit Futurism Center at the Anchorage Museum this summer. She lives in a cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska. www.allisonwarden.com