Matika Wilbur

Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes; born Washington State

BiographyA Tulalip Tribal member, Matika Wilbur was raised on the Swinomish Indian Reservation in Washington State. She studied photography at the Rocky Mountain School of Photography in Montana and the Brooks Institute of Photography in California. She has exhibited at the Royal British Columbia Museum, the Nantes Museum of Art, France, the Seattle Art Museum, and the Burke Museum, as well as nationally at numerous art galleries. Her work examines the struggles of Native Peoples with cultural duality and defining self-identity in a contemporary world. To date, she has created four major series of work: We Are One People—character study portraits of Coast Salish Elders; iHuman, images interwoven with cedar bark; and We Emerge a photographic meditation that examines stereotypical depictions of Native Peoples. Her fourth, most recent series Save the Indian and Kill the Man was exhibited at the Seattle Art Museum in 2011.

Person TypeIndividual