Memo to the Mother: Bob Haozous’s Messages to Mother Earth
Exhibition Dates
February 8, 2024 – January 10, 2026
Featured Image Details Below
I have always made women that were falling. It is not really a style. It is a reference to the death of the earth. All through my career I have done that.
A relatively unknown early piece of work by Bob Haozous (born 1946, Warms Springs Chiracahua Apache) is a tiny bronze sculpture. Emerging on the surface is a small woman with long flowing hair, legs and arms bent, her naked form idealized. She appears to be falling, or floating, a tiny female Icarus.
Trained in western and classical traditions, Haozous has throughout his career returned to the female form using this to articulate a set of philosophical concerns. Although this focus has at times troubled the feminist viewer, for Haozous the female nude carries two symbolic charges. She is a contemporary iteration of Native femininity. She also stands for the human desecration of Mother Earth.
In celebration of Haozous’s 2025 retrospective at the Heard Museum, Phoenix, Memo to the Mother brings together sculptures, monoprints and wearable sculpture that represent Haozous’s decades-long thinking about the environment.
Featured Image Details
Bob Haozous, b. 1943 (Warm Springs Chiracahua Apache), Detail of concho belt with clouds, lightning, and plane, 1989. Courtesy of Bob Haozous.
Gallery image:
Bronze belt buckle of woman falling, 1976, Courtesy of Bob Haozous.
Currently On View
Jim and Lauris Phillips Center for the Study of Southwestern Jewelry.
Art in public spaces, including murals, can serve as a vehicle for dialogue about history, describe relationships, and depict the resilience of the community in the hope to create equity, agency, and healing.
Admission: $10.00
Free for Museum Members, Native Americans, children under 12, students with a valid ID, veterans and active military.
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