Iowa Artist 2026: Henry Payer  

Join us for the 76th installment of the “Iowa Artists” exhibition series! This annual favorite features an Iowa-based artist and exemplifies the Art Center’s mission to bring the world to Iowa and Iowa to the world.

For the 2026 edition of Iowa Artists, the annual exhibition series celebrating artists from our home state, which has been ongoing since 1950, the Art Center welcomes Sioux City-born artist Henry Payer (born 1986). A member of the Ho Chunk people, whose ancestral territory spans areas in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa, Payer explores his history and identity as an Indigenous American. “Aagakinąk Haciwi: We Live Opposite Each Other” will feature Payer’s signature mixed media works with imagery from both Native traditions and Western popular culture.

On view in the A.H. Blank Gallery will be a suite of collages that combine material from historical archives and personal experience, mixing past and present. In the atrium of the Richard Meier Building, Payer will also present a new sculpture that is based on the form of a canoe, a symbol of the Ho Chunk’s enduring search for a homeland that remains always out of reach. The exhibition’s title, “Aagakinąk Haciwi: We Live Opposite Each Other,” draws upon the Ho Chunk phrase for neighbors living on opposite sides of a river, a metaphor for the sharing of space and exchange of perspectives.

Henry Payer (Ho Chunk, born 1986)
Wandering Winnebago No. 5
Mixed media
Courtesy of the artist