SURVIVA by Cannupa Hanska Luger

DC Public Library is pleased to present SURVIVA, a performance and art installation by multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, whose work communicates urgent stories of twenty-first century Indigeneity. The exhibit will engage the public with two large-scale banners, along with an installation centered on a 1970s military survival guide that inspired Luger's innovative new art book, SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide, forthcoming this fall from the new imprint Aora Books. Part graphic novel, part art book, SURVIVA features a 1970s military survival guide that has been creatively repurposed by the artist, using elements of poetic redaction, speculative fiction, and iterative line drawing. Luger shared that both the book and the installation present “an earth-based, demilitarized futuredream that foregrounds Indigenous knowledge as critical to humanity’s survival.” 

 

SURVIVA: A Future Ancestral Field Guide will be available for purchase and signing at the MLK Library opening program on July 1st, and in bookstores everywhere from September 2, 2025.  Click here to view a suggested reading list of related topics.
 

This installation is presented in collaboration with For Freedoms, an artist-led organization deepening civic engagement through the arts.

 

 

Cannupa Hanska Luger is an award-winning artist and cultural innovator who creates monumental installations, sculpture, and performance to communicate urgent stories of twenty­-first century lndigeneity. Born on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, Luger is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, and Lakota. With a socially-engaged creative practice spanning public art, large-scale installation, ceramic sculpture, performance, video, writing, and land-based actions of repair, Luger’s work combines critical cultural analysis with Indigenous advocacy, and respect for the diverse materials, environments, and communities he engages. His work is in numerous permanent museum collections and has been exhibited around the world. Luger has been featured on the cover of National Geographic Magazine, profiled in The New York Times Magazine and Art21 and he is the recipient of numerous honors and awards for his groundbreaking work. Learn more at cannupahanska.com. 

“My practice is rooted in the continuum of generations before me, the urgency for Indigenous visibility in this moment and the dreaming of Indigenous futures.” - Cannupa Hanska Luger