Osage artist wants to engage viewers in conversation

LAWRENCE — Who is Indigenous, Native or alien?

Do the borders on maps reflect an Indigenous vision of place?

And what are we going to do about ongoing environmental degradation?

Those are some of questions encoded into the new paintings by Norman Akers that will be displayed in an exhibition opening this month at Philadelphia’s Temple University.

Temple Contemporary presents “Navigating New Places: Norman Akers” — the inaugural Edgar Heap of Birds Family Artist in Residence exhibition in its Edgar Heap of Birds Family Gallery — Sept. 5 through Dec. 19.

Akers, a professor in the University of Kansas Department of Visual Art, will give an artist talk Sept. 12, with a reception to follow.

An enrolled member of the Osage Nation, Akers piles up layers of realistic and abstract images in his works, alluding to history and home even as he looks to the future.

“I am very interested in the illusion of space, but the layering also makes a reference to time,” Akers said. “I think about past, present and future for much of my work. I think it’s about the future. I look at Osage tribal history, tradition and ways that may inform my work. My work is very much more about moving forward and dealing with this notion of, ‘What are we going to do about the water; what are we going to do about the climate?’

“If you look at the work, you don’t see the stereotypical imagery of Native peoples.”

In Akers’ paintings and prints, there are, however, recurring symbols that, to the artist’s mind, call up notions of a native homeland. An elk, for instance, is one of them that pops up in the new paintings.

Maps are documents that record expanding colonialism, Akers said.

He tries to create landscapes that both intrigue and juxtapose symbols in the mind of the viewer.

“As a Native artist, if you work with the landscape, it’s automatically politicized,” Akers said. “There’s no way you can not deal with that. I don’t think of myself particularly as an activist, but I realize that my work is political. My work deals with a lot of issues about colonialism, loss of land, redefining how our land is interpreted and the notion of what is home today.”

Visual puns like Columbus piloting a spacecraft are a way of subverting viewers’ expectations, even as the humor distracts them, Akers said.

A landscape of crushed plastic water bottles labeled “Ozarka” has the opposite emotional effect.

“I hope my work engages people in conversations, rather than pushing them away from these topics,” Akers said.

Akers will show a half-dozen large paintings that he made during the spring 2025 semester as Temple’s inaugural Edgar Heap of Birds Family Artist in Residence.

Wichita native Edgar Heap of Birds (Cheyenne name Hock E Aye Vi) attended Haskell Indian Junior College, then earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from KU and a master’s degree from Temple. Both Temple and KU have galleries named after him in their art buildings.

Akers said he appreciated the time to devote to such large paintings, returning to them full force after a period of printmaking.

“Painting is not a fast activity,” he said. “I don’t draw things out and then, all of a sudden, make a painting of my drawing. That’s not how I’ve ever worked. I just move paint around ... until I figure out a place where something belongs. And then sometimes, if it gets too orderly, I disrupt it, and I work it to get this sensibility that I’m looking for in the work.”