January 30, 2025
Visual artist Sarah Biscarra Dilley
Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Lassen Land Grab, editorial art commission for "Seeing America's WIlderness for What it Is," The Atlantic 2021
Artist Talk with Sarah Biscarra Dilley
in conversation with Beth Piatote
Thursday, January 30, 2025
4:00 - 5:30pm
Location: Arts Research Center, Hearst Field Annex D23
free & open to the public
WORKSHOP: Using Visual Art for Language Reclamation, with Sarah Biscarra Dilley
Friday, January 31, 2025
10am - 12pm
Participation limited, registration required
Registration link TBA
Location: Arts Research Center
Presented by the Arts Research Center with support from the Dean's office of the Division of Arts & Humanities. The workshop will be held in collaboration with ARC's Indigenous Poetics Lab
On January 30th at 4pm, multidisciplinary artist and writer Sarah Biscarra Dilley will give an artist talk, followed by a conversation with Beth Piatote, ARC Director. The following morning, Friday Jan 31 at 10am, Sarah will lead a workshop on using visual art for language reclamation, as part of ARC's Indigenous Poetics Lab offerings.
Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yaktitʸutitʸu yaktiłhini [Northern Chumash]) is a multidisciplinary artist, writer, language worker, and educator serving as the Director of Indigenous Programs and Relationality at Forge Project.
Their practice is grounded in collaboration across experiences, communities, and place. Relating land and beings throughout nitspu tiłhin ktitʸu, the State of California, and places joined by shared water, their written and visual texts connect extractive industries, absent treaties, and enclosure to emphasize movement, relational landscapes and embodied sovereignties. While much of their foundations are shaped by body, land and the worlds in and around us, they began their undergraduate studies at the Institute of American Indian Arts (Santa Fe, NM), have a BA in Urban Studies from the San Francisco Art Institute, an MA and PhD Candidacy in Native American Studies from University of California, Davis.
Their text-based, curatorial, educational, and visual work has been exhibited nationally and internationally. Sites of engagement include: Smithsonian Institute, Whitney Museum of American Art, University of California (UCOP, Berkeley, Davis, Santa Barbara), California Polytechnic University (San Luis Obispo), SFMoMA, University of Minnesota Press, University of Queensland Art Gallery, California Historical Society, Institute of Modern Art (Brisbane), Artspace (Tāmaki Makaurau), Vancouver Art Gallery, and Creative Time.
Forge Project
Forge Project is a Native-led non-profit organization whose mandate is to cultivate and advance Indigenous leadership in arts and culture. Forge Project fosters relationships between the land and the built environment, creating spaces of kinship for the people who use them.
Forge Project has taken major new steps to further expand its Native-led organizational structure by deepening its unique model of Indigenous self-determination. This includes the formation of an Indigenous Steering Council, a memorandum of understanding with the Stockbridge-Munsee Community, and a transition to 501(c)(3) nonprofit status.
Under the leadership of Executive Director & Chief Curator Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation) and Director of Indigenous Programs & Relationality Sarah Biscarra Dilley (yaktitʸutitʸu yaktiłhini [Northern Chumash]), Forge has directly supported nearly 300 Indigenous artists, hosted dozens of cultural practitioners and knowledge keepers, and built new audiences and platforms for their work.
Transition to Nonprofit Status
Co-founded in 2021 by Becky Gochman and Zach Feuer, Forge was initially established as a private organization to facilitate an immediate, direct impact within the arts and cultural landscape. Since its founding, Gochman has provided seed funding to facilitate the development and implementation of Forge’s Native-led organizational models. Building upon the momentum Forge has achieved over three years, this transition into a nonprofit organization now enacts Indigenous-led governance structures and ensures the organization’s sustainability and long-term impact.
With this shift, the ownership of Forge’s property and assets—including its 60-acre campus, buildings designed by Ai Weiwei, and an art collection of over 175 works, all by contemporary Indigenous artists—have now come under Forge as a nonprofit organization. This transferral of property, assets, and institutional oversight affirms Indigenous self-determination by providing complete agency to Forge’s Native leadership to collectively shape the future of the organization.
Nonprofit status additionally enables Forge to expand their ecosystem as an organization, offering new ways for community members to join in efforts to invest in Indigenous futures, countering historical and ongoing inequities through the redistribution of resources and wealth. As they build their base of support, Forge is committed to tangible wealth redistribution, in which resources and responsibilities are intertwined. They are continuing to develop the various channels through which donors may demonstrate support, including through networks such as Changemakers for Native Art: Collection Stewardship, Equity, and Institutional Change, a group of Forge supporters investing in the future of contemporary Native art by advocating for institutional change in service of Indigenous art and artists.
New Organizational Model
The Indigenous Steering Council (ISC), a regionally diverse, intergenerational group of seven Indigenous leaders, will set high-level priorities and guide the direction of the organization, positioning continuous and collective Indigenous governance at the core of Forge’s organizational framework. The Indigenous Steering Council currently includes Chair and Board Liaison Kerry Swanson (Michipicoten First Nation), Vice-Chair and Board Liaison Sky Hopinka (Ho-Chunk/Pechanga Band of Luiseño Indians), and members Monique Tyndall (Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans), Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw and Cherokee), G. Peter Jemison (Seneca Nation, Heron Clan), Jasmine Neosh (Menominee), and Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora Nation, Turtle Clan). Hopinka and Swanson will additionally serve on Forge’s Board of Directors, led by Board President Mimi Joh-Carnella, alongside board members including John Haworth.
Diplomatic Relations
The continued evolution of Forge reflects the organization’s mission to co-create new and urgent models of Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination, including through knowledge-sharing, community-building, wealth redistribution, and frameworks for supporting cultural production and building collective action. Forge’s foremost commitment to Indigenous leadership has and continues to directly inform their strategic planning, community contributions, and both public and relational programming. This includes the development of diplomatic relations with Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohicans, within whose homelands Forge is situated, as well as collaborations with broad networks of Indigenous leaders and organizations.
A foundational aspect of Forge’s work includes enacting responsibility to Moh-He-Con-Nuck peoples through formal diplomacy alongside Stockbridge-Munsee Community (SMC). Through close collaboration between Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Director of Indigenous Programs & Relationality, and Monique Tyndall, Director of SMC’s Cultural Affairs Department, they have developed a multi-year memorandum of understanding responsive to community needs, including deliverables focused on ongoing collaboration to expand place-based research and cultural access, engage narrative and visual sovereignty, and support avenues of return through co-developed programming and initiatives.