DAVID BRADLEY
Hopi Maiden
Date: 2015
Dimensions: 40” x 30”
Medium: Acrylic on paper, mounted to board
Condition: Overall very good
Provenance:
– Artist
– Private Collection, Santa Fe, NM
– Trotta-Bono Contemporary, Los Angeles, CA
Hopi Maiden employs the same Pop-inflected strategy of repetition and color variation to examine the construction of Indigenous femininity. Four identical images of a Hopi woman – her hair styled in traditional squash blossom buns – appear across the surface. Each image rendered in alternating fields of pink, blue, green, and yellow. As with Kicking Bear, color shifts between figure and background deny any stable or singular reading.
Bradley’s use of serial imagery references both mass media and art history, while quietly critiquing the romanticized and ethnographic framing of Native women. The work resists the notion of the “timeless” or “authentic” maiden, replacing it with a dynamic, contemporary image shaped by visibility, reproduction, and cultural expectation.