Tyrrell Tapaha
Just a Sheepherder
August 10 – September 7, 2024
The Valley is pleased to present Just a Sheepherder, the first solo exhibition of Tyrrell Tapaha, a multi-disciplinary Diné artist whose practice is centered around weaving, textiles, and fiber arts.
In the first room of the gallery, Tapaha shares a series of 35mm photographs made while working in the backcountry at their family sheep camp. These images situate their weaving practice as one deeply rooted in place and guided by intergenerational knowledge, beginning with the raising of sheep and finishing on the loom. Tapaha’s photographs are bolstered by a group of weavings and a sculpture installed in the central room of the gallery. Blending a DIY ethos with highly labor-intensive practices such as hand-spinning and vegetal-dyeing yarns, brain tanning hides, and weaving; Tapaha's works utilize traditional and unconventional methods and materials to showcase a developing interdisciplinary practice.
Together, the works in Just a Sheepherder seek to provide an intimate look into the artist’s practice of sheepherding, their upbringing in the Four Corners region of Dinétah, and their expression of queer identity.
Tyrrell Tapaha (Diné, b. 2001, Goat Springs, AZ) is a multi-disciplinary artist whose practice is centered around weaving, textiles, and fiber arts. Tapaha grew up on the Navajo Nation, where intergenerational pastoral living was handed down through their grandfather, great-grandmother, and other relatives. Working as a sheepherder, Tapaha’s artmaking process begins with the raising of sheep and finishes on the loom. Their textiles are made with raw natural animal and plant fibers, hand-spun and hand-dyed with local flora. Tapaha’s weavings are intimately interwoven with their feelings and memories, illuminating the complexity of their lived experience, the rich history of their community, and imagined futures. Tapaha continues to live and work in the Four Corners region of Dinétah.
Recent group exhibitions include “Crossings” at Kasmin Gallery (New York, NY), “Threshold”at New Image Art Gallery (West Hollywood, CA), “Exploding Native Inevitable” curated by Brad Kahlhamer and Dan Mills at Bates College (Lewiston, ME), “Young Elder” curated by Zach Feuer and Natalie Ball at James Fuentes Gallery (New York, NY, “Through-line” curated by Todd Bockley and Cara Romero at Cara Romero Studio, Santa Fe, NM, “Horizons: Weaving Between the Lines with Dine Textiles” curated by Hadley Jensen and Raphael Begay at Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (Santa Fe, NM), and “Shaped By Loom: Weaving Worlds in the American Southwest” curated by Hadley Jensen at Bard Graduate Center (New York, NY). Tapaha’s weavings are in the collections of the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Gochman Family Collection, and the Tia Collection, among others.
