Home Artist Programs Supported Artists Erica Lord

Erica Lord

Santa Fe, New Mexico

This tuppie, a dog blanket, is made up of 12 rows of beaded bands of color with beaded fringe and brass jingles along the short sides. Each row is made up of mostly single or double rows of single-colored beads in shades of blue, red, golden yellow, and mossy green.

Ovarian Cancer Tuppie, RNA Microarray Scanograph

2025

A long, broad strap of woven beads is made up of hundreds of tall rectangles, most in single colors. Shades across the middle deepen from topaz blue to deep marine, and the outer quarters are cherry and brick red, magenta and pale pink, with touches of ice blue and white. Beaded fringe in the same colors hangs off both sides and along the wide bottom.

Multiple Myeloma Burden Strap, DNA/RNA Microarray Analysis

2024

The artist faces away from us, smiling as she stretches her arms wide to show a beaded shawl-like strap across the back of her shoulders. The top half of the piece is made up of hundreds of small wide rectangles in single colors ranging from cobalt blue to pale yellow and apple red. Frange hanging along the bottom comes to a point at her low back, and the bottom edges are hung with tubular brass jingles.

Diabetes Burden Strap, Blue RNA Microarray Analysis

2024

Seven beaded tuppies, dog blankets, are hung over the backs of seven white, long-furred dog mannequins set up on a platform in a gallery space. The blankets all shimmer in the light but are made up of different families of color. For instance, the one closest to us is mostly jewel-toned pinks and purples while the one immediately behind that are pond- and aqua greens and blues.

The Codes We Carry

2023

Artworks shown are selected from works submitted by the artist in their grant or residency application. All works are copyright of the artist or artist’s estate.

About Erica Lord

Erica is an Indigenous artist with fuchsia-pink hair slicked back from her forehead. She smiles at us, and she has a tattooed line running from the underside of her lower lip down her chin. She wears a colorful scarf and gold-colored hoop earring.

Erica Lord is an interdisciplinary artist who explores concepts and issues that exist within a contemporary Indigenous experience and how culture and identity are affected in a rapidly changing world. Lord draws on her experience of growing up between Alaska and Michigan with a mixed-race cultural identity including Athabaskan, Iñupiat, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, and English descent. She uses multiple mediums to address a mixed identity, constructing new, ambiguous, or challenging representations of race, identity, and culture. Lord received a BA from Carleton College and an MFA from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, including at the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC), the National Museum of the American Indian (NYC), Musée du Quai Branley (Paris), and the National Gallery of Canada. Lord is represented by Accola-Griefen Gallery and currently resides and works in Santa Fe, NM.

Program Participation

Joan Mitchell Fellowship, 2026

Website / Social Links

“ I use art to construct new, ambiguous, or challenging representations of Native identity, including aspects of our history, our voices, and our bodies. My work is a process of reconciliation, a means of recognizing and responding to the world around me, finding my voice, and honoring my community.”