About the Artist
Zoë Marieh Urness
An award-winning Alaskan Tlingit and Cherokee photographer whose work blends documentary and fine art to tell contemporary Indigenous stories.
Raised in the Pacific Northwest with her twin sister, Zoë Marieh Urness studied at the Brooks Institute of Photography before moving to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where she spent nearly a decade establishing her signature style.
Her landmark series Native Americans: Keeping the Traditions Alive reflects a lifelong connection to her culture. “I choose to use my camera as a tool to link the past and present through visual stories,” she explains. Her iconic photograph No Spiritual Surrender (Standing Rock, December 5, 2016), captured during the Dakota Access Pipeline protests, earned her a Pulitzer Prize nomination and established her as a visual storyteller of Indigenous resilience.
Urness has received top honors from the Autry Museum, the Heard Museum, and Santa Fe Indian Market. Her work has been exhibited internationally — a solo show at the Booth Western Art Museum, Art Basel Miami, PHOTO LA, and the landmark exhibition Hearts of Our People: Native Women Artists, which traveled from the Minneapolis Institute of Art to the Frist Art Museum, the Smithsonian’s Renwick Gallery, and the Philbrook Museum of Art. Her photographs are held in major museum and private collections across the United States and abroad, including in the United Kingdom and Russia.
In 2022 she received the Sony Alpha Female+ Grant for her project Indigenous Motherhood, and in 2023 the LIFT Grant from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation to support her project The Eternal Village and the Chilkat River.