Presented by Trotta-Bono Contemporary and the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Santa Fe, Reservation for Irony: Native Wit and Contemporary Realities explores how satire and humor serve as powerful tools in contemporary Native art and storytelling. The featured works were created by a leading group of Indigenous artists including Kent Monkman, Cara Romero, Nicholas Galanin, Tony Abeyta, Diego Romero, Roxanne Swentzell, Geralyn Montano, Richard Glazer Danay, Bob Haozous, David Bradley, Glen La Fontaine, Nico Williams, Kathleen Wall, George Alexander, Del Curfman, Jaque Fragua, Rick Bartow, Harry Fonseca, Fritz Scholder, T.C. Cannon, among others.

Through painting, sculpture, photography, and installation, these artists traverse the absurd, embrace satire, and employ irony to navigate layered identities, confront colonial narratives, and reflect on social and political realities. They wield wit with precision—carving through inherited myths, historical erasure, and political distortion. Comedy becomes a strategy of resistance and revelation, cutting close to truth when language falters.

The artists in Reservation for Irony implement distinct yet interconnected approaches. Kent Monkman’s flamboyant gender-fluid alter ego, Miss Chief Eagle Testickle, uses camp to subvert art historical tropes, reasserting Indigenous presence with biting theatrical flair. Cara Romero blends traditional iconography with contemporary aesthetics to evoke the persistence and evolution of Indigenous identity. Diego Romero fuses Pueblo ceramic traditions with comic-book satire, creating layered narratives that bridge ancestral knowledge and popular culture. David Bradley’s vivid, densely composed paintings critique the commodification of Native life and the distortions of historical memory. Nicholas Galanin’s contribution, part of his I think it goes like this... series, invokes both the opening line of a joke and a poetic metaphor for the fractured work of cultural reconstruction. Together, their artwork opens a conversation about how humor—a vital tool in Indigenous storytelling, teaching, and resiliance—can serve as an act of resistance and remembering.