Moonoka Begay

Creative Director

Moonoka Begay is a White Mountain Apache and Navajo multimedia artist from the Bay Area,California. She is Dartmouth ‘23 and is double majoring in Studio Art and Native American and Indigenous Studies. Moonoka is passionate about the cultural revitalization and political empowerment of Indigenous communities, and her studies center around traditional and contemporary Native American Art. In her own practice she explores and interrogates themes of Indigenous identity, romance, states of wilderness, queer love, rebellion, and the body. Moonoka believes in the power of art as a medium to facilitate cultural healing as well as personal and political empowerment.In the Spring of 2022 Moonoka was presented with an Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award, granted by the International Sculpture Center, and publisher of Sculpture Magazine. This award honors Moonoka’s sculpture entitled break my bones and hang them out to dry which pays homage to the 1990 Native American Graves and Repatriation Act,and the bones of Indigenous bodies that have fallen victim to archaeological and anthropological studies. In the Fall of 2021 Moonoka received a grant from the Dickey International Center at Dartmouth College to travel to London where she conducted research on the impacts of British imperialism on Native North American Art, while interning at London-based gallery, Seventeen.In the Fall of 2021 she also received funding from the Hopkins Center at Dartmouth College to produce and display her own sculptural exhibit entitled Semi Precious. Semi Precious examines and illuminates the line between glamor and grit in an attempt to identify under what conditions Indigenous American art and expression turns from “primitive” to “precious.” This exhibit will be on display at Dartmouth College’s Nearburg Gallery in October of 2022. As a culmination of her studies thus far, Moonoka is also excited to start her position as Intern of Native American Art at the Hood Museum of Dartmouth, starting in September of 2022.