WYOMING — Wyoming artist Sarah Ortegon has been selected to have her work featured in the 2024 National Museum of Women in the Arts (NMWA) biennial Women to Watch exhibit, a first for a Wyoming woman artist.
According to a press release from The Wyoming Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts, Ortegon is from the Wind River Reservation, and her Newe (Shoshone) and Hinono’eino (Arapahoe) heritage shapes her painting, beadwork and performance dance.
“I imagine the future world is inclusive of nature and Wyoming’s landscapes have colors unlike any other…”
Sarah Ortegon
“It’s important to be expressive in my own way to my relation to the past, as an indigenous woman, and bringing it into the future,” Ortegon says of being inspired by history, the environment and visions of a new world. “I imagine the future world is inclusive of nature and Wyoming’s landscapes have colors unlike any other and this exhibition could show us how to come back to ourselves as human beings.”
Ortegon was selected based on her expression and interpretation of the exhibit theme “New, Future and Alternative Worlds.” The piece that Ortegon visions for her submission captures four different jingle dresses, a part of a healing dance in many Native communities, seemingly dancing without a physical body and capturing separate movements. Each dress will depict a different season to reflect the landscape found across Wyoming throughout the year.
This is the first time the newly formed Wyoming Committee of the National Museum of Women in the Arts has sponsored Wyoming artists to be nominated for the national exhibit.
