10 Art Shows to See in New York Right Now

This is Sara Siestreem’s (Hanis Coos) first New York City exhibition, and it demonstrates her ease with various artistic registers that include, but are not limited to, petroglyph-style mark making, beading, weaving, abstract painting, and various printmaking techniques. Her process-based art makes you conscious of time, whether as a cumulative effect—as in her weaving, where you can see how things are made and sometimes cast or 3D printed—or in her paintings, where we see layers of line, image, and shape come together to reinvent notions of ceremony, ritual, and ancestral inheritance.

In skyline (2024), seven glazed slip cast ceramic baskets are placed in front of the windows, making us aware of the pattern of urban structures across the street from the gallery, which denote another type of rhythm in stacked forms. The three large paintings here are more austere than previous panel works, using graphite, acrylic, Xerox transfer, and other techniques that reclaim cultural forms that went into “hibernation,” a term she’s used before, during the 1850s, when her own tribe was dispossessed and persecuted by the US government almost to the point of complete genocide. Each of these art pieces, particularly the baskets and dance caps, renew the promise that art has an alchemical power that can be born from humble yet proud origins, and with the right care it can be woven into gold. —Hrag Vartanian