Sonya Kelliher-Combs: Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist Lecture
Sonya Kelliher-Combs will deliver the Arthur L. and Sheila Prensky Island Press Visiting Artist Lecture as part of the Sam Fox School’s Public Lecture Series at WashU.
About Sonya Kelliher-Combs
Sonya Kelliher-Combs (Iñupiaq/Koyukon) is a mixed-media visual artist whose family hails from the North Slope and Interior of Alaska. Her work focuses on the changing North and our relationship to nature and each other. Through visual art, community engagement, curation and advocacy, Sonya works to create opportunities to feature Indigenous voices and contemporary artwork that inform and encourage social action. Traditional women’s work taught her to appreciate the intimacy of intergenerational knowledge and material histories. These experiences and skills allow her to examine connections between Western and Indigenous cultures. She lives and works in Anchorage, Alaska.
More Upcoming Lectures
Apr 15 at 5:30pm • Museum Lobby
Being and Becoming in Contemporary Chinese Art
This talk by Peggy Wang, associate professor of art history and Asian studies at Bowdoin College, addresses the conflicting pressures that artists in China confronted during the 1990s and early 2000s, including rapid urbanization and cultural globalization. Even as they navigated political constraints and deficits in resources, contemporary artists enacted productive strategies for making and exhibiting their art. This lecture foregrounds artists’ assertions of being and becoming, both as critical tactics for configuring identity and generative topics unto themselves. Wang will particularly examine how artists studied the vibrant dynamics of change through temporal, historical, and material dimensions in their art.
This lecture is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Looking Back Toward the Future: Contemporary Photography from China, on view at the Kemper Art Museum from February 27 to July 27, 2026.
Part of the Sam Fox School Public Lecture Series