Wampum, Elisa Harkins

SAW Video presented in its club a performance by Elisa Harkins, Wampum – an Indigenous electronic music performance that has taken inspiration from Native American sheet music from the 1800’s and re-arranged it into dance music. Songs are sung in the Cherokee language as well as English by the Cherokee/Muscogee Creek artist Elisa Harkins.

Elisa Harkins

Elisa Harkins is a Native American (Cherokee/Muscogee) artist and composer originally hailing from Miami, Oklahoma. Harkins received her BA from Columbia College Chicago and her MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. She has since continued her education at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work is concerned with translation, language preservation, and Indigenous musicology. Harkins uses the Cherokee and Mvskoke languages, electronic music, sculpture, and the body as her tools. She has exhibited her work at The Broad Museum, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, documenta 14, The Hammer Museum, MCA Chicago, MOCA North Miami, and Vancouver Art Gallery. Harkins is currently a mentor at the School of the Art Institute Chicago, she is a Tulsa Artist Fellow, and she is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe.