Kimberly Fulton Orozco

September 5 – October 11, 2026

Kimberly Fulton Orozco is orchestrating belonging through beauty-making rituals that refute ideas of authenticity placed on Indigenous artists by external authority. By reorganizing my understanding of identity through Haida storytelling, a metaphor of Mexican masking, and the role of poetry in visual language, she highlights tensions between an Indigenous past and colonial present— and an inherited burden of assimilation. Kimberly uses color, form, and sound to describe issues of cultural disruption and resulting emotional states. Using motifs of complexity with layers, luminescence, transparency, and abstraction, she holds feelings of alienation, isolation, seizure of identity, loss of language, and responsibility to nurture connection in community for future generations.

Kimberly Fulton Orozco is an artist and storyteller whose work explores the intergenerational impacts of assimilation and the complex forces that shape identity. Her practice reflects on themes such as the fragmentation of memory, the transmission of knowledge through relationship, loss of language, and the renewal of belonging.

A Kaigani Haida Raven from the Yaahkw’ Jaanaas clan of Craig, Alaska, Kimberly was given the name Sáandlaanaay, meaning “first sunrise,” which is drawn from a Haida origin story. She is a citizen of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

Born in Ridgecrest, California, Kimberly was raised between two cultural worlds, situated halfway between her maternal homeland of Jalisco, Mexico, and her paternal homeland of Craig, Alaska. Her art reflects this blend of cultural inheritances, often incorporating traditional Haida forms while reinterpreting them through abstraction. Through her work, Kimberly engages with the tension of being a multicultural Indigenous person in a rapidly changing world, exploring how identity shifts and evolves across time and space.

Kimberly received her BFA in Drawing, Painting, and Printmaking from Georgia State University in 2022, and she is currently pursuing an MFA in Studio Arts at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Her work has been exhibited at institutions such as the Anchorage Museum and the Sainsbury Centre for Visual Arts, and her writing has been featured in Smithsonian Magazine. In 2023, she was honored to be selected as one of the first Indigenous artists for the U.S. Mint’s Artistic Infusion Program.

Kimberly’s work is rooted in a deep sense of gratitude and connection to her ancestors, and she is committed to continuing the practice of cultural exploration and renewal through art.