BIO

Steven J. Yazzie (b.1970) Newport Beach, California; lives and works in Denver, Colorado. Yazzie is a proud member of the Navajo Nation and is a veteran of the Gulf War, serving honorably with the United States Marine Corps from 1988-92. He received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Intermedia at Arizona State University and was named the 2014 outstanding graduate of the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts. He also studied at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Maine, 2006. 

Yazzie is a multidisciplinary artist working in painting, installation, video/film, and community. He is the co-founder of Digital Preserve LLC, a digital film production project which prioritizes collaborations with arts and cultural institutions, leveraging Indigenous issues and voices to the forefront of public discourse. Additionally, Yazzie was a founding member of the indigenous arts collective, Postcommodity, and is the co-founder of the Museum of Walking.

 Yazzie’s professional career spans a long exhibition list of national and international institutions, most notably at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY; National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, Canada; the Museum of Contemporary Native Art and the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe, NM. Throughout Arizona: Heard Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona State University Art Museum, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, Tucson Museum of Art, and the Museum of Northern Arizona. 

Yazzie is a 2021 recipient of the Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellowship and was recently awarded Community Scholar for the Interdisciplinary Research Institute for the Study of (in)Equality, University of Denver, Colorado, and 2022 Native Artist in Residence at the Denver Art Museum.