Artist/composer Elisa Harkins featured in livestream event

Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Harkins’ 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. Her work is collaborative in nature, and she often works with artists within an expanded field.

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. Harkins’ work was the subject of the solo exhibition Teach Me a Song that was on view at Western Front in Vancouver, Canada (2019). Most recently, her work was included in the State of the Art exhibition at Crystal Bridges Museum, Bentonville, Arkansas, and Larger Than Memory: Contemporary Art from Indigenous North American at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona. She has exhibited her work at The Broad Museum, documenta 14, The Hammer Museum, MCA Chicago, MOCA North Miami, and Vancouver Art Gallery. Harkins has been a mentor at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is currently a Tulsa Artist Fellowship Integration Grant Awardee, with her grant she has been producing an online Indigenous concert series called 6 Moons, and she is an enrolled member of the Muscogee (Creek) tribe.