UNDER ALL IS THE LAND
Native Sovereignty: Past, Present, Future
Curated by Jennifer Ley
April 18–19, 2026 | 12–5 PM
Opening (by invitation): April 17
Manufacturer’s Village, Building 3, Studio 1A
East Orange, New Jersey
PRESS RELEASE
In 2026, the United States turns 250. There will be fireworks, branding campaigns, and a familiar story about origins—tidy, triumphant, and incomplete.
Under All Is the Land: Native Sovereignty, Past, Present, Future refuses that script.
Presented during Garden State Art Weekend, April 18th - 19th, the exhibition brings together leading Native artists whose work interrupts the language of ownership that underwrites the nation itself. “Land,” here, is not property. It is not a backdrop for development or a resource to be extracted. It is relation. Obligation. Memory. Life.
This is not a commemorative gesture—it is a disruption.
Installed in a repurposed industrial space in East Orange, within Lenapehoking, the exhibition operates as a counter-monument: not something to look at, but something to reckon with. These works do not illustrate history; they insist on presence. They collapse the distance between past and future, exposing “sovereignty” not as abstraction, but as an ongoing, lived condition.
At a moment when institutions rush to acknowledge Indigenous land while continuing to operate within the same extractive frameworks, Under All Is the Land asks a more difficult question: What would it actually mean to live differently on this ground?
Artists
Ahchipaptunhe (Delaware, Cherokee)
George Alexander (Muscogee-Creek)
Heidi K. Brandow (Diné, Kanaka Maoli)
Ashley & Michele Browning (Santa Clara Pueblo, Pojoaque Pueblo)
Melissa Cody (Diné)
Jeremy Dennis (Shinnecock)
Demian DinéYahzi (Diné)
K’aa Folwell (Santa Clara Pueblo)
Jason Garcia (Santa Clara Pueblo)
Charine Pilar Gonzales (San Ildefonso Pueblo)
Lauren Good Day (Arikara, Hidatsa, Blackfeet, Plains Cree)
Karma Henry (Paiute)
Michael Horse (Yaqui)
Ian Kuali’i (Native Hawaiian, Apache)
Terran Last Gun (Piikani/Blackfeet)
Rebecca Haff Lowry (Delaware)
Michael Namingha (Hopi, Tewa)
Marlena Myles (Dakota)
Darby Raymond-Overstreet (Diné)
Elias Jade Not Afraid (Apsáalooke)
Quill Christie-Peters (Anishinaabe)
Cara Romero (Chemehuevi)
Eugene Tapahe (Diné)
Zoe Urness (Tlingit, Cherokee)
About the Curator
Jennifer Ley is a curator and producer working at the intersection of contemporary Native art and public engagement. Her recent projects challenge institutional complacency around Indigenous visibility, including a 2022 installation addressing the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, and Land Back - A Tiny Gallery Takeover in Lenapehoking (2024), a guerrilla-style exhibition staged on suburban lawns and pocket parks in Lenapehoking during Native American Heritage Month.
She is co-founder of the Friends of Native American Art at MAM and serves on the Arts Committee at the Montclair Art Museum.
Press Contact
Jennifer Ley
[Email - jltey@me.com
[Phone - 917 439-4380 (text first, please)