The Center for Native Futures (CfNF) sits in a sunny downtown storefront space at Adams and Dearborn. Inside you will find contemporary visual art exhibitions alongside community programming and a studio residency—all in service of centering Native voices and advancing Indigenous Futurism, which CfNF describes as the “artistic means for expanding possibilities and realities by imagining our realities without colonial limitations.” Founded in 2020, CfNF is the only all-Native artist-led arts nonprofit organization in Chicago/Zhegagoynak.
CfNF provides an expansive understanding of Native cultures and contemporary Indigenous fine art practices far beyond reductive postcolonial representations that focus solely on the past. They provide a critically needed gathering space where, as cofounder and director of exhibitions and programs Debra Yepa-Pappan explains, “We can just be artists. . . . We don’t have to be the Native on display, or the [Natives that] always have to talk about our history.” In a January 2025 interview with CBS, CfNF exhibiting artist David Martin echoes this dynamic sentiment: “We are a living, breathing, evolving culture. . . . We are not extinct.”
CfNF provides residents and exhibiting artists with direct, multifaceted support, including stipends. “There’s a lot that we put into the care of artists as people, and not just artists as a commodity, or their artwork as just a commodity,” says Yepa-Pappan. The 2025 Artist in Residence is the multidisciplinary and self-taught June Carpenter, an Osage Nation tribal member whose artwork “addresses systemic injustices against Native people,” says CfNF. Forthcoming in the gallery space is a vibrant two-person exhibition featuring Kalyn Fay Barnoski (Cherokee) and Haley Greenfeather English (Red Lake and Turtle Mountain Ojibwe) titled “ten:ten.”
Cofounder and board member Andrea Carlson recently mounted a solo exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA). The two institutions partnered on a copresentation of the work of Muscogee and Cherokee artist and composer Elisa Harkins with programs at both sites: visual art at CfNF and an Indigenous pop performance on the MCA stage—featuring hand drums crafted at a CfNF workshop. In 2025, the organization looks forward to further community partnerships and growth, including the expansion of “Mound Summit,” their biannual Native art symposium. By providing holistic support to Indigenous creatives, CfNF celebrates their contemporary achievements and ensures Indigenous futures.
Center for Native Futures
centerfornativefutures.org
