Julie Buffalohead (born 1974) is a contemporary Indigenous artist from the United States.[1] Her work mainly focuses on themes of racial injustice, indigenous rights, and abuse of power.[2][3] She creates paintings with stories told by anthropomorphic animal characters who have agency as individuals. Buffalohead conflates the mythical with the ordinary, the imaginary, and the real, and offers a space into which viewers can bring their own experiences.[4]
Buffalohead was born in Minnesota in 1974, and is an enrolled member of Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma.[5][6][7] In 1995, she received her Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design before going on to get her Master of Fine Arts from Cornell University in 2001.[8] Buffalohead has stated that her time working with elementary school students while in graduate school caused her to change the way she looked at her Native heritage, which led her to create art about Indigenous history.[9] She currently resides in St. Paul, Minnesota.[8]
Buffalohead's art focuses on Indigenous experiences and stories, often subverting imagery of Indigenous people used in popular culture, including Disney's Pocahontas.[9][10] She often uses metaphors and allegorical images in her work to critique social issues including gun violence.[2] Her work may include whimsical imagery like tea parties and cartoon characters, Buffalohead claims that the work is intended to be unsettling.[6] Buffalohead's work also incorporates the use of anthropomorphic animals, mainly coyotes.[6][11] Buffalohead is a mixed media artist, and works with many different mediums, including oil painting and printmaking, and includes materials like birch bark and porcupine quills in her pieces.[8]
Buffalohead has been the recipient of several awards, including the McKnight Foundation Fellowship for Visual Arts, a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant, and the Minnesota State Arts Board for Visual Artists.[2]
Her work is included in the collection of the Walker Art Museum[19] and the Muscarelle Museum of Art.[20]