For Immediate Release
Contact: Amy Day
Tel: 515.271.0344 (o)
515.612.0775 (c)
aday@desmoinesartcenter.org
DES MOINES, IOWA (December 2025) – For the 76th edition of Iowa Artists, the annual exhibition celebrating homegrown creativity, the Des Moines Art Center welcomes Sioux City, IA-born artist Henry Payer (b. 1986). A member of the Ho-Chunk tribe, whose ancestral territory spans areas in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois, and Iowa, Payer explores his history and identity as an Indigenous American in his exhibition titled Aagakinąk Haciwi: We Live Opposite Each Other. The show features the artist’s signature mixed media works that combine imagery from both Native traditions and Western popular culture. Through layering and recombining material drawn from personal experience and archival research, he creates a unique visual language. Referencing dispossessed Native people, who, without access to animal hides and birchbark, began illustrating and recording events onto ledger books, Payer makes contemporary “ledger art” in which antique accounting paper serves as the basis for his collages and paintings. In another series, the artist references the fraught history of government-issued blankets by using this fabric as a substrate for his work.
On view in the A.H. Blank Gallery will be collages inspired both by historical archives and personal experience. Payer engages the long history of colonial commercialization of Native culture by bringing together materials such as 19th-century photographs and postcards with references to contemporary advertising and branding. The Winnebago RV, produced from the early 1960s to the late 2000s, recurs frequently in his work as a reminder of the continuing life of the word “Winnebago,” a term used by white settlers to describe the Ho-Chunk that persists today. For Payer, the RV symbolizes the multiple forced migrations his ancestors endured after their removal by the United States government.
Payer’s signature wry humor is apparent in pieces such as No Place Like Home, in which he depicts a pair of glittering ruby slippers, a reference to Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz (1939). The artist’s Dorothy wears regalia adorned with decorative ribbon appliqué, a traditional artform for the Ho-Chunk, designed by Payer to recall the poppy flowers that put Dorothy to sleep, forgetting her quest to find a way home. Payer transforms imagery from the movie into a meditation on dislocation and memory. “Dorothy could click her heels and return home, but the Ho-Chunk cannot,” he explains.
The Kyle J. and Sharon Krause Atrium will showcase a project that represents a new direction for Payer: a nine-foot-long papier-mâché canoe that symbolizes the long history of displacement endured by his people and provides inspiration for the exhibition’s title. “Aagakinąk Haciwi: We Live Opposite Each Other,” encompasses multiple meanings. The root word “aagaki” means “on each side,” implying opposite sides of a river, while “haci” refers to a house or denotes where one lives. This concept speaks to the experience of neighbors sharing space across a divide. In this show, Payer’s work speaks to the coexistence of peoples and perspectives past and present.
Aagakinąk Haciwi: We Live Opposite Each Other is on view from January 17, 2026 through June 17, 2026 in the A.H. Blank Gallery and Kyle J. and Sharon Krause Atrium. The exhibition is curated by Elizabeth Gollnick, associate curator. The show is accompanied by a 28-page richly illustrated, complimentary gallery guide that includes a scholarly essay by the curator and an interview with the artist.
For more information, contact Senior Director of Communications and Marketing Amy Day at aday@desmoinesartcenter.org. Visit desmoinesartcenter.org for additional events and programs. Top image: Henry Payer.
About the Des Moines Art Center
The Des Moines Art Center is a vibrant, AAM-accredited (American Association of Museums) institution located in the capital city of Iowa that welcomes over 300,000 visitors annually from across the country and around the globe. Its historic campus consists of three buildings designed by major architects of the 20th century—Eliel Saarinen, I. M. Pei, and Richard Meier—incorporated into the natural landscape of Greenwood Park. The Art Center is home to one of the strongest collections of 20th and 21st century art in the region, and it hosts a series of ground-breaking exhibitions and lectures each year featuring artists known regionally, nationally, and internationally. The experimental art for which the Art Center cares is reflected in its creative offerings, including a celebrated education program that prioritizes access and collaboration, an art school with studio classes for all ages, and the John and Mary Pappajohn Sculpture Park, situated on 4.4 acres in downtown Des Moines. The Art Center is committed to the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion, which are incorporated into every facet of its mission and identity.
RELATED PROGRAMMING
Opening Celebration
Friday, January 16 | 5 – 7 pm
Macomber Lobby and A.H. Blank Gallery
Free; no registration required.
Panel Discussion
Saturday, January 17 | 2 pm
Levitt Auditorium
Free; registration required.
Gallery Talk with Associate Curator Beth Gollnick
Sunday, February 8 | 1:30 pm
A.H. Blank Gallery
Free; no registration required.
Free Guided Tours
See our Event Calendar for details and dates.
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