Tanya Lukin Linklater: Crested

Portikus is pleased to present Crested, Tanya Lukin Linklater’s first institutional solo exhibition in Europe.

Developed specifically for Portikus, the exhibition brings together a new cycle of work comprising bentwood sculptures, textile installations, beadwork and watercolors, through which Lukin Linklater engages questions of belonging, memory and Indigenous knowledge in the context of the ongoing afterlives of colonial violence.

For over fifteen years, Lukin Linklater has lived in North Bay, Northern Ontario, on the territory of the Nbisiing Anishnaabeg. Her Sugpiaq roots are in Afognak and Port Lions in Alaska—a region profoundly shaped by Russian colonialism, followed by American rule. Her trajectory has unfolded between places, languages and forms of knowledge.

In Crested, Lukin Linklater addresses continuance through Sugpiaq visual practices as thinking through relationships—to history, landscape, lived culture and embodiment. 

A key reference for the exhibition is a small woven bag, one of several Sugpiaq belongings housed in Saint Petersburg’s Kunstkamera, brought there from Alaska in the 19th century during Russia’s colonial rule. Lukin Linklater asks what forms restitution and repatriation might take, and is particularly interested in how knowledge, methodologies and cultural practices can be carried forward despite colonial control and institutional forgetting.

In her installations, Lukin Linklater references Sugpiaq cosmologies, symbols used for adornment and customary bentwood techniques, as well as weather phenomena and movements of water. At the same time, she addresses hybrid forms that emerged through colonial violence. European materials such as glass beads and textiles were integrated into existing Indigenous artistic traditions and transformed into self-determined forms of expression. Through subtle gestures, Lukin Linklater illuminates the often-overlooked spaces of knowledge cultivated by Indigenous women.

The exhibition will be activated by a series of Open Rehearsals held on May 30 and 31, 2026. Together with performers Mya Dixon, Talia Dixon, Mekko Harjo, and Mina Linklater, the artist develops choreographic situations that explore listening, sensation, and embodied inquiry. These open rehearsals are not intended to convey finished enactments, but rather to share ever-changing processes.

With Crested, Tanya Lukin Linklater has conceived an exhibition that resists linear narration and fixed interpretation. Instead, it cultivates forms of attention grounded in relation rather than possession, opening a space shaped by movement and the entanglements of history with lived experience.

An adapted iteration of the exhibition will be on view at Galerie Rudolfinum in Prague in the fall of 2026.

Tanya Lukin Linklater (Sugpiaq, b. 1976, Kodiak Island, USA) lives and works in North Bay, Ontario, Canada. Her practice encompasses dance, performance, video, photography, installation, and writing.

Her recent solo and two-person exhibitions include Remai Modern, Saskatoon, Canada (2026); Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, USA (2024); Oakville Galleries, Oakville, Canada (2023); Contemporary Art Gallery, Vancouver (2022), among others.
Lukin Linklater’s works and performances have been presented at numerous international institutions, including the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada (2026); the Dia Art Foundation, New York, USA (2025); Camden Art Centre, London, UK (2025); the Toronto Biennial of Art, Canada (2022/23/24); the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, USA (2023); the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, USA (2023); the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, USA (2023); the 14th Gwangju Biennale, Gwangju, South Korea (2023); the New Museum, New York, USA (2021); the Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil (2020); and the Chicago Architecture Biennial, Chicago, USA (2019).

Her poetry collection Slow Scrape was published in 2020 (2nd ed., Talonbooks, Vancouver 2022).

Lukin Linklater received the Wexner Center for the Arts Artist Residency Award in Visual Arts (2023-2024) and the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts for Visual Arts (2021).

Crested is funded by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes (German Federal Cultural Foundation) and by the Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien (Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media). Further support is provided by Hessisches Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Forschung, Kunst und Kultur and Städelschule Portikus e.V.. Academic research for this exhibition was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Canada. With additional support from Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm.

Director: Barbara Clausen
Curator: Juliane Bischoff
Supported by: Carina Bukuts
Project coordination: Claudia Famulok, Jacqueline Jakobi