Opening September 2027 at the Heard Museum and Phoenix Art Museum, Jamie Okuma: With These Hands features more than 60 works of fashion, sculpture, beadwork, and contemporary design in dialogue to reveal the artist’s singular vision and technical mastery
PHOENIX, AZ—August 17, 2026—In September 2027, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) and the Heard Museum will present Jamie Okuma: With These Hands, the first major mid-career retrospective of contemporary artist and fashion designer Jamie Okuma (Luiseño, Shoshone-Bannock, Wailaki, and Okinawan) and the inaugural exhibition co-presented by the two neighboring Phoenix-based institutions. Showcasing Okuma’s boundary-defying, interdisciplinary practice, the exhibition features more than 60 works from the late 1990s to the present, including objects from Okuma’s personal archive. Soft-sculptures, couture, ready-to-wear garments, and examples of beadwork demonstrate Okuma’s masterful approach to working across art and fashion design, yielding evocative pieces that are simultaneously grounded in tradition and contemporary sensibilities. A historic collaboration between the Heard and PhxArt, Jamie Okuma: With These Hands will be on view at both institutions simultaneously from September 24, 2027 through March 5, 2028.
In a joint statement, from David M. Roche, the Heard Museum Dickey Family Director and CEO, and Jeremy Mikolajczak, the Sybil Harrington Director and CEO of Phoenix Art Museum: “We’re honored to present this landmark exhibition to the Phoenix community and beyond. Jamie Okuma: With These Hands marks a defining milestone in Jamie Okuma’s career, illuminating how her unique interdisciplinary practice has made an indelible impact in the realms of contemporary art, fashion, and Indigenous creative expression, while establishing a new framework for understanding her work within the contemporary visual arts and fashion history. This presentation further underscores the commitment our two institutions share to creating opportunities for Indigenous artists and to making Phoenix the premier destination to experience the breadth and diversity of Indigenous art and culture.”
Jamie Okuma is an internationally acclaimed artist and fashion designer, known widely for her intricate beadwork, mixed-media sculpture, and couture works. As a child, Okuma created and began exhibiting beadwork made with antique seed beads, including dolls adorned in fully beaded regalia. Since then, her creative practice has vastly expanded, integrating traditional beading practices with the visual languages of horror film, punk subcultures, traditional powwow regalia designs, avant-garde couture fashion, and the natural landscapes of her California home to examine issues of identity and cultural belonging.
Jamie Okuma: With These Hands situates Okuma’s work within broader cultural conversations around Indigenous authorship, identity, and culture, investigating the ways in which her practice fits within the context of other interdisciplinary artists of her generation—and what sets it apart. In addition to exploring Okuma’s practice within the framework of deep traditional connection, the survey sheds light on how she has achieved global success by reimagining and combining pop imagery, pictographic traditions, and historical patterns and iconography, effectively challenging preconceived notions of Indigenous art, design, and fashion.
Presented across both the Heard and PhxArt, which are located less than three blocks apart in downtown Phoenix, objects in the exhibition are explored through a set of storylines, resisting the traditional thematic structures of surveys of this kind. As they move through the galleries at each venue, visitors will discover Okuma’s work within the context of family and homeland, beauty and protection, and power and defiance. Instead of standard gallery spaces with neutral walls, works will be showcased in immersive environments, inspired by geographies that have informed their creation. For example, a dress with silk-chiffon sleeves is placed in an expansive meadow scene in reference to the ecosystem’s waving grasses. Other environments present throughout the exhibition include the ocean, cityscapes, desert landscapes, and the forest, with each showcasing its own unique set of objects.
“Jamie Okuma’s work acts as self-portraits and insists on Indigenous authorship as both a creative and a deeply personal act,” Roshii Montaño (Diné), Curator at the Heard Museum. “She challenges long-held assumptions about Native art and design while defining her practice entirely on her own terms. With These Hands foregrounds that self-determination and affirms a distinctly contemporary Native voice.”
Exhibition Organization, Tour, and Catalog
Jamie Okuma: With These Hands is co-organized by the Heard Museum and Phoenix Art Museum and co-curated by Roshii Montaño (Diné; Heard) and Helen Jean. It will be accompanied by an extensive catalog highlighting Okuma’s work, featuring contributions by Montaño; Gaylord Torrence, Curator Emeritus of Native American Art at the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art; and Elizabeth Way, Ph.D., Curator of Costume and Textiles at the Fashion Institute of Technology; along with an interview between the artist and fellow collaborator Keri Ataumbi and a special letter from Vogue senior fashion and style writer Christian Allaire. The catalog will be published in collaboration with Scala Arts & Heritage Publishers in September 2027. Following its premiere, the exhibition will travel to the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indiana.
About the Heard Museum
Since its founding in 1929, the Heard Museum has grown to become nationally and internationally recognized for its world-class exhibitions, award-winning publications, unparalleled festivals, and innovative educational programs. Dedicated to connecting Indigenous creativity to the world, the Heard showcases the beauty and vitality of Indigenous creative expression by presenting the voice and vision of American Indian artists. A welcoming destination for children and families, the Heard offers engaging experiences that inspire curiosity and foster appreciation for American Indian art and culture. The Heard Museum is supported by the generosity of Heard Museum members and donors, the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the City of Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture.
About Phoenix Art Museum
Since 1959, Phoenix Art Museum (PhxArt) has engaged millions of visitors with the art of our region and world. Located in Phoenix’s Central Corridor, PhxArt creates spaces of exchange and belonging for all audiences through dynamic exhibitions, collections, and experiences with art. Each year, 300,000 guests on average engage with critically acclaimed national and international exhibitions and the Museum’s collection of more than 21,000 works of American and Western American, Asian, European, Latin American, modern, and contemporary art and fashion design, along with vibrant photography exhibitions made possible through the Museum’s landmark partnership with the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson. PhxArt also presents live performances, outstanding examples of global cinema, arts-education programs and workshops, a monthly live-music series, and more for the community. To learn more about Phoenix Art Museum, visit phxart.org, or call 602.257.1880.
About Jamie Okuma
Jamie Okuma (b. 1977, Luiseño, Shoshone-Bannock) is a leading Indigenous artist and fashion designer. Okuma lives and works in La Jolla, California, where she is an enrolled member of the La Jolla band of Indians in Southern California. Okuma studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe and has exhibited her art since childhood, winning seven Best in Show awards for her presentations at the Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market and the Santa Fe Indian Market. Okuma’s work is held in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Albuquerque Museum, Crocker Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Hood Museum of Art, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian (NMAI), The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Raclin Murphy Museum of Art, Schingoethe Center (Aurora University), Spencer Museum of Art, the Heard Museum, and Phoenix Art Museum, and has been exhibited internationally. Okuma recently became the first Native American inducted into the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and is a 2025 CFDA Vogue Fashion Fund Finalist.
For more information, please contact:
The Heard Museum:
Ivana Morales
Senior Account Executive
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Ivana@evolveprandmarketing.com
973-864-4523
Phoenix Art Museum:
Sarah McNaughton / Lucia Santos
Resnicow and Associates
smcnaughton@resnicow.com / lsantos@resnicow.com
212-671-5161 / 212-671-5181
Need further assistance?
Please call Visitor Services at 602.257.1880 or email
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