Sonya Kelliher-Combs’ works negotiate borders, those that divide geographical territories and define the self. Informed by Alaskan Native culture and the rural community in which she was raised, Kelliher-Combs’ work is deeply rooted in craft, particularly the labor of women and a knowledge of material that is passed across generations. Combining customary and synthetic materials that range from walrus gut, porcupine quill, and hides, to glass beads, acrylic gel polymer, and nylon threads, Kelliher-Combs’ imbues her works with a visceral quality that references skin, the highly mediated surface through which an individual begins to interact with others. Spanning sculpture, painting, and installation, her works share a visual language marked by repeated symbolic motifs, from pouch-like forms titled “secrets,” to sinuous lines that suggest topographies, and the rapidly shifting landscape of the arctic. Seen together, Kelliher-Combs’ works not only chronicle the ongoing struggle for Indigenous self-determination, but more broadly, the ever-evolving relationships between humans and their lived environment.

Sonya Kelliher-Combs is an artist and curator who lives and works in Anchorage. Kelliher-Combs is additionally represented by Tureen, Dallas.
 
Later this year, Kelliher-Combs’ work will be included in the exhibitions Qillaniq, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, opening June 12, as well as Hold to this Earth: Works by Contemporary Indigenous North American Artists from Tia Collection, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, West Bretton, United Kingdom opening June 13.  Her work was additionally included in An Indigenous Present, co-organized by Jeffrey Gibson and Jenelle Porter, which originated at the ICA Boston, and will travel to the Frist Art Museum, Nashville and Frye Art Museum, Seattle. In 2025, her work was included in the exhibitions ALOHA NŌ, Hawai’i Triennial 2025, Shifting Landscapes, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and Smoke In Our Hair: Native Memory and Unsettled Time, Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY. Additionally in 2025, Kelliher-Combs was the recipient of the Anonymous Was A Woman grant. Past awards and fellowships include the United States Artists Fellowship, Joan Mitchell Fellowship, Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, Rasmuson Fellowship, Anchorage Mayor’s Arts Award, and the Alaska Governor’s Individual Artist Award. In 2024, Mark, the first major monograph of her work, was published by Hirmer Verlag, edited by Julie Decker, PhD. Her work is included in the permanent collections of the Anchorage Museum, Alaska State Museum, Juneau, Brooklyn Museum, Dallas Museum of Art, Denver Art Museum, Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, Forge Project, Taghkanic, IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Art, Santa Fe, National Museum of the American Indian, New York, University of Alaska Museum of the North, Fairbanks, and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others.