Jeremy Dennis, Hill Top (from the "Sacredness of Hills" series), 2019. Metal Print, 31h x 41w in.
Jeremy Dennis (b. 1990, United States) is a Native American contemporary fine art photographer renowned for his powerful and evocative imagery. As a member of the Shinnecock Nation, Dennis delves into themes of Indigenous identity and culture, using his elaborately staged photographs to confront and challenge the stereotypes and hardships that Native people have faced and continue to endure due to Western colonialism.
Represented by Aicon Contemporary, Dennis will exhibit in the “Focus” section of the 2024 Armory Show, showcasing photographs from several of his ongoing projects.
In his series “Rise,” Dennis employs cinematic stylization to appropriate horror film tropes, contextualizing them within the historical destruction and displacement of Native tribes in America. This series portrays Native Americans as horror movie zombies, serving as a poignant metaphor for the enduring repercussions of colonialism that the white people in the images can no longer ignore.
Another notable project, “Nothing Happened Here,” features staged and digitally altered portraits of non-Indigenous people impaled by arrows. These images cleverly critique the "white guilt" that many Americans have carried through generations, embodying the discomfort and inconvenience of coexisting with the descendants of the people their ancestors sought to destroy.
Long before the Hamptons became a summer beach destination for affluent New Yorkers, and even before the first Europeans founded the Southampton settlement in the 17th century, the Shinnecock tribe resided on the island. Over the centuries that followed, the Shinnecock Nation suffered significant population and land loss due to American expansion.
Today, the Shinnecock tribe has nearly 1600 tribal members and stewards 900 acres of land, a fraction of their ancestral territory. Part of Dennis’ body of work documents Shinnecock ancestral sites as they appear in the Hamptons today. Through this documentation, Dennis juxtaposes the past and present, highlighting history's enduring, haunting echoes.
Join us at the 2024 Armory Show to experience Jeremy Dennis' compelling work, which gives voice to the resilience and enduring spirit of the Shinnecock Nation.
In addition to being an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, Dennis founded the non-profit Ma’s House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc. on the Shinnecock Reservation.
His photographs were recently included in the group exhibition In Our Hands: Native Photography, 1890 to Now at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and he was awarded the Chapin Cultural Connector Award from Huntington Arts earlier this year. Dennis was one of ten artists of color selected as a HueArts NYS Leadership Cohort by Museum Hue this year.
Dennis has exhibited his work in both group and solo exhibitions, including So Spoke the Earth, the Past, and the Present at the Mason Gross Galeries at Rutgers University, NJ (2023), Stories—Dreams, Myths, and Experiences for The Parrish Art Museum’s Road Show (2018), and On This Site: Indigenous People of Suffolk County, Suffolk County Historical Society, Riverhead, NY (2017).
Dennis holds an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, and a BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University, NY. He lives and works in Southampton, New York, on the Shinnecock Indian Reservation.