In an Artery of New York Commerce, Diné Artist Eric-Paul Riege Plays with “the Real and Fake”

New Mexico–based artist Eric-Paul Riege chose Canal Street, a commercial thoroughfare and counterfeit market, to question notions of material value in his first New York solo exhibition.

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NEW YORK—Gallup-based artist Eric-Paul Riege’s (Diné/Navajo) work is heavily influenced by his matrilineal lineage of Diné weavers, some whom would have previously sold work in the Native American trading posts of the region. Such posts have historically set standards for Native craft, yet are primarily owned by non-Natives. An overarching focus of his practice has been examining this dichotomy, particularly questioning what makes a Native object “real” and who decides that it is so.

“Craft is an economy that most Native people have a direct relationship with, but there’s scenarios where someone is face-to-face with the artist and the work is still deemed ‘fake’ somehow,” he tells me. “Putting an object behind a vitrine gives an aura and value to the object. These shops envelop you in beauty but the maker becomes lost in the middle of that.”

In his body of mixed-media, often monumental artwork, Riege considers the nuances of authenticity, inauthenticity, and the animist nature of objects, visualizing these themes in sculptures and performances imbued with elements of Native American crafts and materials. Riege recently brought this ongoing inquiry to famous New York commercial district Canal Street, opening his solo exhibition iiZiiT [3]: RIEGE Jewelry + Supply (January 31–March 29, 2025) at Canal Projects.

Sometimes I don’t even like to reveal every material that I use in my work because I’m playing with the real and fake.

Riege was born in 1994 in Gallup, where he lives and works. As a student at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, where he earned his BFA in Studio Art and Ecology with a minor in Navajo Language and Linguistics, Riege began questioning what materials like turquoise, wool, beads, and silver mean for Native craftspeople in the Southwest—many of whom cannot afford them and frequently use faux alternatives.

His thesis culminated with a 2016 window exhibition at the UNM Art Museum titled iiZiiT, which references the colloquialism “Is it?” Riege revisited the theme in the exhibition iiZiiT [+\/\/o] in 2022 at Stars Gallery in Los Angeles, presenting woven sculptures of sheep suspended from the ceiling that evoked wool but amalgamated repurposed materials like synthetic fibers, beads, and materials like plastic wrap that had been previously used to pack and ship his work.

Riege says that iiZiiT aims to “evoke and emulate” ideas around “authenticity of materiality,” particularly as it relates to jewelry and weaving. “But I’m not critiquing it nor celebrating it,” he says. “Sometimes I don’t even like to reveal every material that I use in my work because I’m playing with the real and fake.”

Riege’s iiZiiT exhibition in New York opened in late January with an hour-long dance performance, where Riege activated his sculpture jaatloh4Ye’iitsoh (Earrings for the Big Gods). It’s the centerpiece of the exhibition, comprising suspended sculptures woven together from a mix of natural and faux materials, some resembling Diné earrings or other motifs.

iiZiiT [3]: RIEGE Jewelry + Supply, which is Riege’s first solo show in New York, also aims to echo how these themes relate to Canal Street and its famous counterfeit luxury goods market.

Like the trading posts of the Southwest, [Canal Street’s] economy is… often successful at the expense of the maker.

“A knockoff pair of sunglasses or purse provides a livelihood for the people who sell them,” he says. “A knockoff purse serves the same purpose as one bought at a boutique around the corner. Like the trading posts of the Southwest, the economy is purely tourism-driven and it’s often successful at the expense of the maker.”

The title of the New York iteration of the series plays with traditional naming conventions for Southwest trading posts: Riege incorporates his own surname, and also references how trading posts often display jewelry alongside jewelry-making supplies, like strings of beads.

“I wanted the installation to represent both—some objects look a little more like supplies while others are more architectural but also something that could be reassembled,” Riege says. “It’s playing with the idea that even when an object is finished, another object can begin, and thinking about who deems it ‘supplies’ or who deems it a finished product.”

Riege will close out the Canal Projects exhibition with a longer, four-hour performance. “My performances embody the practice of being a weaver and the longness of your time spent at the loom,” he says. “It’s about meditating with the objects, learning about them, waking them up.”

He adds that patience is especially important when working with soft and amorphous materials. He works small, often creating the same object over and over to build his larger installations in an assembly-line fashion, an approach that he credits to his lifelong immersion in weaving.

“I learned so much of this patience from weavers and their relationship to the loom,” he says. “When you’re at the loom, it goes millimeter by millimeter by millimeter. You work for hours and make a tiny amount of growth. It’s an exercise in meditation and making—it’s not passive, or something you can do while having a conversation or watching television. It’s intentional and requires focus.”

You can see the life that’s been lived in these objects before they were here.

Riege’s work is held in several major museum collections, including the National Gallery of Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. Last September, Riege achieved a milestone when his work was included in the Montclair Art Museum’s long-term rehang of its Native American collection, Interwoven Power: Native Knowledge / Native Art alongside artists like Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith and Kay Walkingstick.

In September, Riege will have a two-part exhibition at the David Winton Bell Gallery at Brown University that will travel to the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. Each rendition of the show will be distinct, showcasing objects from the museums’ respective Native collections, including weavings and tools like combs, which Riege will engage with in site-specific ways.

“It will be a contemporary response to how objects are protected, stored, conserved,” he says. “I’m someone who likes the scarring of objects, and that’s something you see in all my work. I disassemble and rework things. You can see the life that’s been lived in these objects before they were here.”