Cannupa Hanska Luger’s sonic and sculptural installation Volume (2023) consists of a chorus of double-chambered globular whistles made of clay and fired using either a pit, a wood-fired kiln, or an electric kiln. The exteriors of the whistles are modeled after the skulls of foxes, ocelots, vultures, armadillos, and turtles, while their internal structures are loosely inspired by the design of pre-Columbian Aztec wind instruments, such as ocarinas and tlapitzallis. Through the haunting qualities of both their sound, material, and form, each instrument is designed to perform a form of communion with ancestral presences. Originally commissioned for a concert hall, the ensemble of whistles has been re-tuned specifically for Aspen’s mountain landscape, which lies at the same altitude as Luger’s New Mexico studio. Now sited outdoors and open to the elements, the work performs using a mechanical system powered by compressed air, producing vibratory, sustained waves of sound that resonate across the valley.

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a Lakota multidisciplinary artist known for monumental installations, sculptures, and performances that communicate urgent stories of 21st Century Indigeneity. In works incorporating ceramics, steel, fiber, repurposed materials, video, sound, and performance, Luger engages in land-based actions of repair, speculative fiction, and political action. Since 2018, Luger has been developing Future Ancestral Technologies, a methodology combining Indigenous customs and science fiction to conjure life-based solutions for coexistence with the earth. As with his Bead Project (2018), which prompted communities across the U.S. and Canada to shape and send handmade clay beads to be assembled into sculptural installations, much of Luger’s practice is centered on social participation, inviting the public to co-create projects that question our relationship to the social ecologies of the present. One of his most well-known initiatives is the Mirror Shield Project (2016-ongoing), which invites people to create and send reflective shields to Water Protectors standing up against the Dakota Access Pipeline near Standing Rock, ND as symbols of resistance and reclamation. Luger is a 2025 Eiteljorg Contemporary Art Fellow and a 2025 Ourworlds Immersive Visual Arts Award recipient. His work has recently been exhibited in the Sharjah Biennial 16, the Whitney Biennial (2024), and the 14th Shanghai Biennale. 

Volume (Fox, Ocelot, Vulture, Armadillo, Turtle) is curated by Simone Krug, Curator. The ensemble was originally commissioned by Vic Brooks and Nida Ghouse for the exhibition Shifting Center (2023) at Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Image: Cannupa Hanska Luger, Watȟéča, 2023. Image courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York. Photo: Gabriel Fermin.