The Coyote is a figure featured as a “trickster” across Native American storytelling. However, among the Maidu, the Coyote conveys benevolent teachings of the totality of human nature.
Harry Fonseca: Transformations is the first exhibition dedicated to exploring Fonseca’s expressions of “queerness” through the reintroduction of his beloved character Coyote. Harry Fonseca (Nisenan Maidu/Portuguese/Native Hawaiian) established liberatory expressions in contemporary Indigenous and queer art. The exhibition will feature works from the Heard’s fine art collection, such as Coyote in the Mission (1983) and Roxie-The Black Swan (1984), as well as a recent acquisition, Pow Wow Club (1981). Fonseca’s paintings explore Coyote as a metaphor for the transformations of self that defy Western conceptions of Indigeneity coded with a visual language that explores queer subcultures.