AGE: 33
BASED: Norman, Oklahoma
Leaning against a nine-foot, bronze-cast double figure, Raven Halfmoon tells me, “I have drawings of this space, of my work here, from four years ago.” That was long before her Salon 94 solo debut, which opened in September, was even on the horizon. We’re standing in the New York gallery’s Stone Room, the sun-flooded crown jewel of the renovated Beaux-Arts mansion, which does indeed seem like a dream site for Halfmoon’s art. With its marble floor and arched casement windows, it’s a gleaming foil to the pair of roughly hand-modeled works she’s placed here—including The Guardians, 2024, whose stitched-together femme beings stand watchfully, immovable on their formidable pillar-legs. Inspired by installation photos from previous exhibitions at the gallery, which have featured towering, deity-like sculptures by Niki de Saint Phalle and Huma Bhabha, Halfmoon imagined scaling up her own earthenware figures to occupy this imposing room too.
The Caddo Nation artist, who lives in Oklahoma, uses traditional Indigenous pottery techniques, updating and personalizing ancient forms, marking her pieces with graffiti-style tags and incorporating pop culture imagery. Her pieces have political and spiritual gravitas—she favors stacked faces and doubled forms that represent, she says, “myself, my mom, the powerful women who raised me, and my ancestors”—but her sculptures are not without humor.
In the tabletop bust Bucked Off Again, 2024, for example, a woman stenciled with lightning bolts wears a cowboy hat and flips off the world with a red-manicured middle finger. While Halfmoon doesn’t depict specific individuals, this work feels like her unstoppable avatar. Officially on a career hot streak, the artist also has a traveling exhibition that originated at the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum and will make its final stop at the Contemporary Austin in early 2025. When I ask what’s next for her, she muses over how to find a kiln big enough for her hulking clay figures. There’s no question that she has imminent plans—both culturally speaking and quite literally—to break even more molds.
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