Overview
For Frieze Sculpture 2025, Stephen Friedman Gallery is pleased to exhibit the work of Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.
Trade Canoe: King of the Mountain (2025) is a twelve-foot-long bronze canoe, among the final in the artist’s Trade Canoe series (1992–2025). In this body of work, Smith piles her canoes with cargo, in this case, a ghostly white American bison dramatically perches atop a massive boulder.
A major example of Smith’s significant body of sculptural work, the large-scale bronze is rooted in ancestral memory and carved into the contemporary landscape. The bison here is a representation of Big Medicine, a rare white bison that roamed the Flathead Indian Range in western Montana between 1933–1959 and was revered by Smith’s tribe. In 1961, the US Government took possession of the animal, preserving its taxidermy remains at the Montana Historical Society Museum; after more than six decades, the institution has finally returned Big Medicine to Smith’s tribal group. This sculpture pays tribute to this history of theft and repatriation.
In November, Fruitmarket in Edinburgh will open Wilding, the first posthumous exhibition of Smith’s work work in a public institution.
