How do we relate to the world around us? How do we dream new worlds to life? How do we resist in times of upheaval? In his new book Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair, Joseph M. Pierce (Cherokee Nation citizen) draws on Cherokee thinking, Indigenous queer theory, and contemporary Native American art to illuminate the creative principles and practices that breathe life into Indigenous thought and practice. In her recently released Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead, writer, scholar, musician, and artist Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) explores water as a catalyst for radical transformation, offering regenerative methods for understanding history, community, and the worlds we inhabit.
Join us for a special evening celebrating the release of these two volumes with the authors and esteemed curator Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation). Together, they will discuss contemporary Native American art and the relational paradigms of Indigenous communities, including how these paradigms develop political and artistic sovereignty while helping us imagine new worlds. The program will be followed by a book signing of Pierce’s Speculative Relations (2025) and Simpson’s Theory of Water (2025).
Candice Hopkins is a citizen of Carcross/Tagish First Nation and serves as the executive director of Forge Project in Taghkanic, NY. Her writing and curatorial practice explore the intersections of history, contemporary art, and Indigeneity. She is curator of Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969 (Hessel Museum of Art, 2023), Impossible Music, co-curated with Raven Chacon and Stavia Grimani (Miller ICA, 2024), and the touring exhibitions Soundings: An Exhibition in Five Parts, co curated with Dylan Robinson, and ᑕᑯᒃᓴᐅᔪᒻᒪᕆᒃ Double Vision. She was senior curator for the 2019 and 2022 editions of the Toronto Biennial of Art and part of the curatorial team for the Canadian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, documenta 14, and Sakahàn: International Indigenous Art. She is the editor of the forthcoming collection Native Visual Sovereignty: A Reader on Art and Performance.
Joseph M. Pierce is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a 2024–25 MoMA Scholar in Residence. He is an associate professor in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University and the founding director of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Initiative there. He is the author of Argentine Intimacies: Queer Kinship in an Age of Splendor, 1890–1910 (2019) and Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair (2025), and co-editor of the 2021 special issue of GLQ, “Queer/Cuir Américas: Translation, Decoloniality, and the Incommensurable”. Along with S.J. Norman (Wiradjuri), he is co-curator of the performance series Knowledge of Wounds.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson (Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg) is a musician, writer, and academic whose work uses Nishnaabeg intellectual practices and breaks open the boundaries between story and song. She has lectured and taught extensively at universities across Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe, and has over 20 years experience with Indigenous land-based education. She is the author of eight books, including A Short History of the Blockade (2021), the novel Noopiming: The Cure for White Ladies (2020), which was short listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and the Dublin Literary Prize, and, most recently, Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead (2025). She holds a PhD from the University of Manitoba and is a member of Alderville First Nation.
This program is organized by MoMA’s Department of Research Programs.
The MoMA Scholars in Residence program is supported by the Ford Foundation.