Niro is known for her innovative use of the photographic medium, including hand-tinting, surface manipulation, detailed matte boards, and diptychs and triptychs in multi-panel series. She uses poetic and humorous approaches to evoke varying responses to themes of womanhood, indigeneity, and history. Her career coincides with the development of the concept “visual sovereignty” introduced by the artist/scholar Jolene Rickard in relation to contemporary Native art. Moving beyond the earlier strategies of self-representation, artists that deploy visual sovereignty are consciously deconstructing the colonial gaze and allowing indigenous people to center themselves through visual expression. Niro creates works that are visually informed by deep cultural knowledge. Her images not only counter expectations of non-indigenous audiences, they reaffirm knowledge that is culturally specific to Onkwehon:we (indigenous, “real people” or Iroquois). Because there are often shared experiences and histories across indigenous people globally, the ideas she presents have resonance beyond her own community.

The Borders series is a set of four images that were created for the exhibition The Imaginary Line. She manipulated photographs by digitally adding graphic and photo elements to the compositions. The central figures in each image are a pair of outstretched arms in gestural relation to one another conveying a theme about relationships –interpersonal and social. She connects tangible borders from the real world to the symbolic imagery; barbed wire and fenced off roads are paired with opposing clenched fists in Borders. There is an immediate sense of the physical relationships between people, but she is also concerned with geographical, ecological, psychological, and physiological. She references a deep history of political relationships negotiated by the six nations that comprise the Haudenosaunee (aka Iroquois Confederacy) in Treaties. Framing the arms that gesture in agreement, Niro paired an extended Two Row wampum belt and the Grand River. The Two Row belt is a contract, symbolic of the equity, sovereignty, and respect agreed to in the Kahswnetha treaty between the Haudenosaunee and the Dutch in the 17th century. The two purple rows signify boats on a river path: the boats will travel endlessly side by side; each nation will respect each other’s ways and will not interfere with the other.

These works would by the first by Niro to enter the Crystal Bridges collection, advancing our efforts to develop our holdings of Native art and art by women. They will be used immediately to present concepts and content vital to the US Constitution exhibition. Following that exhibition, they will be available for use in future exhibitions of contemporary art, photography, women’s art, and Native art. Their rich content allows for extensive thematic approaches. Niro is committed to creating imagery that is directly linked to her own Mohawk reality while creating opportunities for all to engage in dialogue about how we imagine our futures.