The Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull is one of a number of nineteenth-century Indigenous Chiefs depicted in Beam’s works. Beam admired, not only Sitting Bull’s bravery during his wars of resistance, but also his worldliness as a well-traveled cultural performer, not “bound by his own culture but a willing participant in human affairs” (1984). This work, the first of Beam’s purchased by the Bisches, marks the beginning of the artist’s transition away from Colour-field painting toward the politicized iconography and multimedia practice for which he became known.

© Carl Beam / CARCC Ottawa 2024