Worlds In Between: The Art and Cosmology of Charlie Willeto (Virtual)

Join Patrick Dean Hubbell, Jennifer Nez Denetdale and Ninabah Reid Winton for a conversation on Charlie Willeto.

Charlie Willeto spent his life in Diné Bikéyah, the homeland of the Diné people (Navajo Nation). A Hatááłii (medicine man), Willeto exchanged his hand-painted, doll-like wooden carvings for goods at trading posts neighboring his home in New Mexico. Drawing from Diné ceremonial traditions (yet modifying forms and symbols for a secular Western context), his stylized sculptures speak to his experience as a healer, community member, and artist of profound vision and wit.

The American Folk Art Museum invites you to a conversation celebrating Willeto’s legacy, with artist Patrick Dean Hubbell, historian Jennifer Nez Denetdale and curator Ninabah Reid Winton. Together, they will examine Willeto’s work, currently on view in the collection-based exhibitions Self-Made: A Century of Inventing Artists and Folk Nation: Crafting Patriotism in the United States, through the lens of Diné history, philosophy and art.

This conversation offers a unique look at the intersections of artmaking, healing, and resistance within a Diné context. It’s an opportunity to learn how Willeto mediated his position as both artist and healer in mid-twentieth-century America, navigating the sacred and the secular, Diné and settler value systems, as well as Native and Western aesthetic traditions.