Indigenous Artists Infiltrate the Met With a Guerrilla A.R. Project

New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art is currently home to a guerrilla art project featuring the work of 17 Native artists. The unsanctioned augmented reality exhibition, “Encoded,” was launched by nonprofit media and design lab Amplifier on Indigenous Peoples’ Day, taking over the institution’s American Wing.

Each of the artists has remade existing works from American art history in the Met collection, bringing the Native point of view into galleries long dominated by the perspective of European settlers and their descendants.

“Amplifier wanted to open up an opportunity for more dialogue and discussion about why for so long have Indigenous peoples have not been more integrated into these collections that are in these giant institutions,” exhibition curator Tracy Renée Rector told me.

You can see (and hear) the show’s 25 altered masterpieces on your iPad or smartphone when you are at the museum. Representatives from Amplifier are also on hand to distribute exhibition guides and even offer tours of the show, which runs through the end of the year.

A New Take on Well-Known Works

The first work in the show can actually be seen outside the museum, with a larger-than-life Indigenous dancer in colorful traditional garb, by Skawannati, looming over the Met façade. Inside, video work like  by Cannupa Hanska Luger, continues inside, dancing across paintings like Thomas Cole’s  (1836–37).

“The works that I’m presenting are an intervention on a narrative that American art has maintained, which is that the landscape of North America was void of population,” Luger said in a video for Amplifier. “I wanted to present work that brought the living things that existed on the landscape before America was America.”

In the galleries, some of the Met’s most famous works are included in the show, such as by Winslow Homer. Open up the “Encoded” website, and the work’s imperiled Black sailor is joined by a black and white figure dancing to a Tlingit song from a 2006 Nicholas Galanin video, .

The artist also contributed an AR version of his work , planting a sign reading “Indian Land” in white capital letters across the verdant landscape of  (1865) by Jasper Francis Cropsey. The work is inspired by the original Hollywood sign, which said “Hollywoodland.” Galanin first installed a physical version in California’s Coachella Valley for the 2021 edition of the Desert X public art biennial.

Other works recontextualized by “Encoded” include the monumental (1851) by Emanuel Leutze. Viewed through the lens of the exhibition, the Continental Army has become engulfed in vegetation, plants weighing down the boat as it traverses the river. The new piece, by the artist Flechas, is titled .

“The piece is talking about our connection to the natural world.
It is not separate but integrated,” Rector said. “We can’t not acknowledge the earth that holds these stories.”

A High-Tech Project in a Hurry

Though the show has been in the works for four years, Rector didn’t come on board until July, when an anonymous Indigenous donor provided the funds to finally bring Amplifier’s high-tech vision to life. She had roughly a month to put together the artist list, which she wanted to make sure represented the diversity of Native artists across North America, or Turtle Island, as it is called by some Indigenous people.

“The artists had to turn something around really fast. Some of the artists had pieces ready to go that were immersive for digital technology, and others we supported with technical assistance,” Rector said. “I wanted to be sure to express that Indigenous creatives are dynamic and also have been using technology since time immemorial, from pottery work, weaving, and embroidery
to digital technology. So the exhibition
highlights both traditional forms of art and technology and contemporary forms.”

She was also excited that the exhibition was unsanctioned: “What does it mean to take up space? What does it mean to show up authentically?
What does it mean to work outside of systems?”

The Met has been making a concerted effort to feature the work of Native artists in recent years. In 2018, the museum displayed Indigenous art in its American Wing for the first time, with “Art of Native America: The Charles and Valerie Diker Collection.” It followed up by creating a new Indigenous art program and hired Patricia Marroquin Norby as its first curator of Native American art.

The museum even commissioned a pair of monumental history paintings by Cree artist Kent Monkman for its series of contemporary “activations,” one of which recast  with his Two Spirit alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle. (Rector originally wanted an animated version of Monkman’s work, which debuted in 2020, for “Encoded.”)

And just last month, Jeffrey Gibson became the first Indigenous artist to create sculptures for the niches of the museum’s Fifth Avenue façade, with the installation of the commission .

But as “Encoded” illustrates, there is still plenty of room to add Indigenous voices to the museum’s displays. A 2019 project, for instance, called “Native Perspectives,” added labels written by Native artists and historians to 18th- and 19th-century paintings and sculptures depicting Indigenous subjects—but those texts are no longer on display in the Met galleries.

The museum did not respond to my request for comment about the unsanctioned exhibition or future plans for its Indigenous art program.

“The Met has not issued any formal response,” Amplifier executive director Cleo Barnett told me in an email. “A researcher from the American Wing approached us yesterday at the Met expressing genuine interest in the project, but we haven’t received any official communication from the institution itself.

A Meaningful Moment

Many of the loved ones of the “Encoded” artists—who include Amelia Winger-Bearskin, Jarrette Werk, Josué Rivas, Katsitsionni Fox, and Mer Young—were at the museum for the show’s opening day.

“Watching family members see their relatives depicted or witnessing their own faces light up when they see their own cultural symbols reflected back at them at the exhibition, brought so many tears of joy,” Rector said.

The exhibition was also inspiring reflection from museum goers encountering the AR artworks, such as Cass Gardiner’s (2025). It overlays 8-bit Native American figures that recall  video game characters atop Jerome B. Thompson’s (1858), of a group of white people picnicking atop a mountain. “Look at these guys, acting like they discovered the place,” a speech bubble pops up.

“Many people recognized the educational game from school and were curious to understand more from Cass Gardiner’s perspective about what colonization means, and what the actual impact of westward expansion is from an Indigenous point of view,” Rector said.

An especially moving work is Priscilla Dobler Dzul’s response to Thomas Crawford’s marble sculpture (1848). The original work fits into the trope of the extinction of the Native American people, romanticizing the death of young woman, shown topless. Dzul’s piece (2023) tenderly covers the woman’s bare breasts with a blanket made from the skin of a wild mountain lion.

“Priscilla’s work honors the many Indigenous lives lost to colonization in Mexico, but also uplifts the cosmologies and vitality of the people, while honoring the ancestors as well,” Rector said.

The project is not just about mourning what has been lost in the centuries since colonization began. It is also a celebration of Indigenous life and culture, and their continued presence here not only in the Met, but across the continent.

“The exhibit is gorgeous and fun,” Rector added. “I think it’s a beautiful addition to the Met, if they are open to incorporating it into their conversations about the work there.”

Source: Exhibition - news.artnet.com