How does a Lakȟóta artist link dreams and artificial intelligence to imagine futures for her people? Experience five years of innovative installations in Kite and Wíhaŋble S’a Center: Dreaming with AI, on view at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe through July 13, 2025.
The IAIA exhibition – Suzanne Kite’s third solo exhibition this year across the United States – presents several installations that highlight her collaborative work that merges cutting-edge technology with Indigenous knowledge systems.
Download the exhibition catalogue here, and look at photos of the installation in our Flickr album.
In Iron Road and Dreamlike Star, stones and minerals (the building blocks of computers!) are arranged in Lakȟóta geometric language that suggest Lakȟóta quilt patterns. They’re placed atop a mirror to show resonance between the Earth and the cosmos (stars).
In this first section, inputs are taken from Kite’s dreams. Using AI, her dreams are translated into geometric Lakȟóta shapes created by designer Sadie Red Wing. Kite has figured out a way to bypass large-scale, commercial AI networks in favor of an AI model (run on her PC) that aligns more closely with Indigenous knowledge systems.
A digital embroidery machine has yards of embroidered black velvet flowing out of it. Oihanke Wanica (Infinity) is a collaboration with New York City’s Center for Art, Research and Alliances. As you examine the velvet, you’ll find geometric Lakȟóta shapes translated (using AI) from Kite’s dreams.
Nearby, there’s a comfortable lounge where you can watch Cosmologyscape, an interactive digital quilt – a public art project in which AI translates the public’s dreams into artist-created geometric symbols. It’s a collaboration with Alisha B. Wormsley, so the virtual community quilt manifests both African-American and Lakȟóta shapes.
Installations in the other half of the exhibition shows collaborative projects that combine Indigenous knowledge systems and AI. Along one wall in the spectacular, tranquil gallery, you can explore a print and digital resource library on international research programs that integrate Indigenous knowledge systems into AI design.
Oneiris is a large interactive station through which visitors are invited to generate dream symbols that AI adds into a wall-sized display that looks like a portal to the cosmos. Inspired by the Lakȟóta concept of a Dream Language, she and her many technical collaborators genuinely bring dreams to life.
Spashed across the final wall of the space, The Land Paints Itself is a video collaboration with her Wíhaŋble S’a Center for Indigenous AI at Bard – a lab that explores Indigenous advances in this science and art. Watch as AI generates dazzling colors and patterns as four Lakȟóta dream about Indigenous futures. Kite suggests that the evolving technology of dreams is a legitimate way for her nation to envision ways forward.
Provocative, visionary, and affirmative – meet Kite herself in an interview with Artforum editor Tina Rivers Ryan in March 2025, when Kite’s work was featured on the cover.
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