Crested / mâcistan: Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater
Crested / mâcistan brings together the works of Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater in their first major joint exhibition in Europe. Presented at Galerie Rudolfinum, the two prominent First Nations artists from North America meet in dialogue with the site-specificity of the building, to explore issues of ancestral belonging, the circulation of knowledge, and the handling of memory. What do things tell us about the institutions that hold them? Who decides what is preserved? What stories circulate between people, objects, and places?
“We are honoured that Tanya Lukin Linklater and Duane Linklater are bringing their work to Prague for this important exhibition. The project is the result of close collaboration between Galerie Rudolfinum and its partners – the Vienna Secession, Kunsthalle Bielefeld, and Portikus in Frankfurt am Main. Alongside the works from the solo shows at these leading institutions, the exhibition will feature a new site-specific collaboration created especially for Galerie Rudolfinum, as well as pieces presented in dialogue by the two artists. The exhibition marks their first major joint presentation in Europe.”
– Julia Bailey and Hana Janečková, curators
TANYA LUKIN LINKLATER
Tanya Lukin Linklater (b. 1976, Alutiiq (Sugpiaq) from Kodiak Island, USA; lives and works in North Bay, Ontario, Canada). Her practice encompasses dance, performance, video, photography, installation, and writing referencing Indigenous dance and visual art lineages, structures of sustenance, and weather. She undertakes embodied inquiry and rehearsal in relation to scores and ancestral belongings in museums and elsewhere. Her work revolves around the histories that affect Indigenous peoples’ lived experiences, (home)lands, and ideas and her writing responds to relationships of what she has come to call felt structures.
Lukin Linklater’s notable solo and two-person exhibitions include Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (2026), Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus (2024); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2022); Chicago Architecture Biennial (2019); Remai Modern, Saskatoon (2017); and Art Gallery of Alberta, Edmonton (2016). Her group exhibitions include the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa (2026, 2022); SITE Santa Fe (2026); Vancouver Art Gallery (2025); 14th Gwangju Biennale (2023); Aichi Triennale, Nagoya (2022); Toronto Biennial of Art (2022); New Museum Triennial, New York (2021); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2020); Heard Museum, Phoenix (2020); Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville (2018); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2017); Winnipeg Art Gallery (2017); and La Biennale de Montréal (2016).
Lukin Linklater received her PhD in Cultural Studies from Queen’s University (2023), and holds a Master’s of Education from the University of Alberta (2003), and a Bachelor of Arts from Stanford University (1998). She is the 2021 recipient of The Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, Visual Arts and in 2019 she received the Art Writing Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries. Slow Scrape, her first book of poetry, was published by The Centre for Expanded Poetics and Anteism (2020), with a second edition published by Talonbooks (2022).
DUANE LINKLATER
Duane Linklater (b. 1976, Omaskêko Ininiwak from Moose Cree First Nation; lives and works in North Bay, Ontario, Canada). His practice explores and questions the conventions of the museum in relation to the current and historical conditions of Indigenous peoples, their objects, and approaches to materials. Strategically working across a range of media, including sculpture, installation, painting, and video, he addresses the contradictions of contemporary Indigenous life within and beyond settler systems of knowledge, representation, and value.
Linklater was featured in the 2022 Whitney Biennial: Quiet as It's Kept, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. In 2018, Linklater installed pêyakotênaw – a public artwork comprising three large teepee sculptures – along the High Line in New York. He was the 2016 recipient of the Canada Council for the Arts Victor Martyn Lynch-Staunton Award for Media Art, and the 2013 Sobey Art Award winner. In 2017, Linklater was awarded a public commission for the Don River Valley Park, Toronto in 2017.
His solo exhibitions include at Kunsthalle Bielefeld (2026); Secession, Vienna (2025); Dia Chelsea, New York (2025); Camden Art Centre, London (2025); Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago (2023); Frye Art Museum, Seattle (2021); Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Michigan State University (2017); Mercer Union, Toronto (2016); Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City (2015); and Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2015). Linklater has been featured in group exhibitions including at the 35th Bienalde São Paulo (2023); 2022 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Princeton University Museum of Art (2022); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (2019); Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal (2017); SeMa Biennale, Seoul (2016); Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto (2015); Vancouver Art Gallery (2015); and Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff, as part of dOCUMENTA (13) (2012).