Dopamine Regression, 2010
Wool, aniline dyes, wool warp, selvedge cords
70 x 48 inches
Into the Depths, She Rappels, 2023
Wool warp, weft, selvedge cords, and aniline dyes
87 x 51 1/2 inches
Born 1983 in No Water Mesa, Arizona, Melissa S. Cody is an enrolled member of the Navajo Nation. In 2007, she received a Bachelor’s degree in Studio Arts and Museum Studies from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
A fourth-generation Navajo weaver, Cody’s intricate tapestries are often associated with the Germantown Revival, a stylistic movement named after the government wool from Germantown, Pennsylvania, that was supplied to the Navajo during the time of the Long Walk. The weaving style was characterized by a complex interaction of traditional and historical contingencies: Vivid commercial dyes and new economic pressures prompted enterprising Navajo weavers to adapt, creating bold new textiles. The commercial viability of the craft became a means of continuance, even as it altered it.
Cody’s work carries that balance of tradition, history, and contemporaneity forward. Working on both a traditional Navajo loom and mechanized jacquard machine, Cody recombines traditional patterns into sophisticated geometric overlays and haptic color schemes that bridge traditional and contemporary vernaculars. “I’m a child of ’80s video game culture: Pac-Man, Frogger, Nintendo,” Melissa points out, “I grew up with this world of pixilation.” Cody approaches weaving as ever-evolving craft tradition and art form.
Photo by Graham Nystrom
Melissa Cody’s work has been featured in many museums and galleries, such as: the Stark Museum of Art (2014, Orange, Texas); Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Institute of American Indian Arts (2017–2018, Santa Fe); Ingham Chapman Gallery, University of New Mexico (2018, Albuquerque); Navajo Nation Museum (2018); SITE (2018–2019, Santa Fe); MASS Gallery (2019, Austin); Heard Museum (2019, Phoenix); Exploratorium (2019, San Francisco); Museum of Northern Arizona (2019, Flagstaff); Rebecca Camacho Presents (2019, San Francisco); National Gallery of Canada (2019–2020, Ottawa); Hammer Museum (2023, Los Angeles), Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP) (2024, São Paulo, Brazil), and MoMA PS1 (2024, Queens, NY). Cody’s works are featured in the collections of many museums, including the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art; the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Heard Museum; the Minneapolis Institute of Arts; the Museu de Arte de São Paulo; the New Britain Museum of American Art; the Palm Springs Art Museum; the Rhode Island School of Design Museum; and the Stark Museum of Art.
Melissa Cody
1983
Born in No Water Mesa, Navajo Nation, Arizona
Enrolled Member of the Navajo Nation
Lives and works in Los Angeles, California
EDUCATION
2007
Institute of American Indian Arts
SELECTED SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2017
Future Tradition: Melissa Cody, Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, Houston, Texas, February 3–May 28
2023–2024
Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies, Museum of Art São Paulo (MASP), Sao Paulo, Brazil, October 10, 2023–January 21, 2024; MoMA PS1, New York, New York, April 4–September 2, 2024.
2024
Melissa Cody: Power Up, Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, New York, April 25–June 15, 2024.
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2007–2008
Family Ties: Young Navajo Weavers, Heard Museum West, Surprise, Arizona, September 8, 2007–March 30, 2008
2010
Turning Point: Navajo Weaving in the Late 20th Century, Cooper Gallery, University of Nebraska State Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska, October 1–November 30
2012
Messengers 2012, Rainmaker Gallery, Bristol, United Kingdom, June 13–July 25
2014
Navajo Weaving: Tradition and Trade, Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas, February 8–July 12
2017–2018
Connective Tissue: New Approaches to Fiber in Contemporary Native Art, Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Institute of American Indian Arts, Santa Fe, New Mexico, July 7, 2017–January 21, 2018
2018
Edgewater Reflections, Ingham Chapman Gallery, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico, January 22–February 27
Footprints Forward: Navajo Contemporary Artists Post-1868, Navajo Nation Museum, Window Rock, Arizona, October 26–December
2018–2019
SITElines.2018: Casa Tomada, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico, August 3, 2018–January 6, 2019
2019
Interwoven, MASS Gallery, Austin, Texas, January 25–March 2
Self, Made, Exploratorium, San Francisco, California, May 23–September 2
Artists for a New Era: Nine 4 Ninety, Museum of Northern Arizona, Flagstaff, Arizona, June 23–October 13
Heritage, Rebecca Camacho Presents, San Francisco, California, October 4–November 9
2019–2020
Àbadakone | Continuous Fire | Feu continuel, National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, November 8, 2019–October 4, 2020
2019–2022
Color Riot! How Color Changed Navajo Textiles, Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona, April 5–September 2, 2019; Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida, December 19, 2020–March 14, 2021; Montclair Art Museum, Montclair, New Jersey, September 10, 2021–January 2, 2022
2021
Crafting America, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas, February 6–May 31
2022
Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in Community, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, February 20–May 15
2023
Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, California, October 1–December 31, 2023
2023–2024
Diné Textiles/Nizhónígo Hadadít’eh, RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island, September 2, 2023– September 29, 2024
The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans, National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., September 22, 2023–January 15, 2024
2023–2025
Making Their Mark: Works from the Shah Garg Collection, Shah Garg Foundation, New York, New York, November 2, 2023—March 23, 2024; Berkeley Art Museum, Berkeley, California, October 27, 2024–April 20, 2025; Kemper Art Museum, St. Louis, Missouri, September 2025–2026
2024
To Take Shape and Meaning: Form and Design in American Indian Art, North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh, North Carolina, March 2 – July 28, 2024
Patterns, Luhring Augustine, New York, New York, June 2 –August 2
Tesselations, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York, New York, July 10–August 16
2024–2025
Mending Stories: Fiber Art Invitational, Mesa Contemporary Arts Museum, Mesa, Arizona, Sep 13, 2024–Jan 19, 2025
2025
Warp and Weft: Technologies within Textiles, Curated by Allison Glenn, the Shepherd, Detroit, Michigan, January 25—April 12
A Thought Is A Thread: Contemporary Artists Reworking Textile Traditions, Picker Art Gallery, Hamilton, New York, February 21–May 18, 2025
Reverberations: Lineages in Design History, Ford Foundation Gallery, New York, New York, March 4–May 3, 2025
You Stretched Diagonally Across It: Contemporary Tapestry, Dallas Contemporary, Dallas, Texas, April 11–October 12, 2025
SELECTED COLLECTIONS
The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, Bentonville, Arkansas
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, San Francisco, California
Heard Museum, Phoenix, Arizona
Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota
Museu de Arte de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
New Britain Museum of American Art, New Britain, Connecticut
Palm Springs Art Museum, Palm Springs, California
Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, Rhode Island
Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas
Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
BOOKS AND CATALOGUES
Besaw, Mindy N., Candice Hopkins, Manuela Well-Off-Man, eds. Art for a New Understanding. Fayetteville, Arkansas: University of Arkansas Press, 2018.
Ford Foundation Gallery. Reverberations: Lineages in Design History. New York: Ford Foundation Gallery, 2025.
Museu de Arte de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand & MoMA PS1, Melissa Cody: Webbed Skies. São Paulo: MASP, 2023.
Quick-to-See Smith, Jaune, et al., eds. The Land Carries Our Ancestors: Contemporary Art by Native Americans. Washington D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 2023.
Site Santa Fe. SITElines 2018: Casa Tomada. Santa Fe: SITE Santa Fe, 2018.
Strickland Fields, Nancy. To Take Shape and Meaning: Form and Design in Contemporary American Indian Art. Raleigh: North Carolina Museum of Art, 2024.
Webster, Laurie D, D. Y. Begay, Lynda Teller Pete, and Louise Stiver. Navajo Textiles: The Crane Collection at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science. Denver: University Press of Colorado, 2017.
Well-Off-Man, Manuela, ed. Connective Tissue: New Approaches to Fiber in Contemporary Native Art. Santa Fe: Art Guild Press, 2017.
Wertz, Jay. The Native American Experience. New York: Metro Books, 2012.
Williams, Lucy Fowler, ed. Water, Wind, Breath: Southwest Native Art in the Barnes Foundation. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.
PERIODICALS
“2017 SWAIA Report: Melissa Cody (Navajo).” Native American Art Magazine, October/November 2017: 130.
“7 Extraordinary Artworks to Seek Out at the Newly Returned ADAA Art Show in New York.” Artnet News, November 4, 2021.
Ahlberg Yohe, Jill. “A Living Art: Thinking with Objects”. American Art, Fall 2024.
Art in America 107, no. 2 (2019): cover.
Boyd, Kealey. “Porous Definitions of Home and Belonging at the Santa Fe SITE Biennial.” Hyperallergic, November 29, 2018.
Brown, Patricia Leigh, “A Millennial Weaver Carries a Centuries-Old Craft Forward,” New York Times, April 19, 2024.
“Color Riot!” Native American Art Magazine, October/November 2021.
Corriel, Michele. “Illuminations: Melissa Cody.” Western Art and Architecture, June/July 2019.
Davis, Kathryn M. “Connective Tissue: New Approaches to Fiber in Contemporary Native Art.” Southwest Contemporary, September 1, 2017.
Durón, Maximilíano and Alex Greenberger. “L.A. Artists to Watch: Melissa Cody.” Art News 117, no. 4, 2019: 96.
———. “15 Los Angeles Artists to Watch.” ARTnews, January 9, 2019.
Durón, Maximilíano. “The Best Booths at ADAA’s 2021 Art Show, From Vodou Flags to Tour-de-Force Abstraction.” ARTnews, November 4, 2021.
———. “United States Artists Fellowships Go to Olu Oguibe, Melissa Cody, American Artist, Lonnie Holley, and More.” ARTnews, January 26, 2022.
Finkel, Jori. “Doing It Their Own Way.” W Magazine, February 8, 2023.
“Future Tradition.” Native American Art Magazine 7, February/March 2017: 118–122.
Goldberg, Julia, Ruby Woltring, Celia Raney, Maya Forte and Bettina Broyles. “Place Making: Student journalists explore SITE Santa Fe’s ‘Casa tomada’ and its re-envisioning of life in the Americas.” Santa Fe Reporter, November 21, 2018.
Green, Christopher. “Beyond Inclusion.” Art in America 107, no. 2, 2019: 72–77.
Gussie, Fauntleroy. “Groundbreakers: Moving On.” Native Peoples Magazine 23, no. 1, 2010: 36–41.
Joyce, Erin. “The Hits and Misses of Santa Fe’s Much-Anticipated SITE Biennial.” Hyperallergic, October 9, 2018.
Levin, Jennifer. “Weaving Modern Stories: Melissa Cody.” Santa Fe New Mexican, August 3, 2018.
Lopez, Antonio. “Focus Artists: Meet Three Artists Whose Careers You Should Follow.” Southwest Art 30, no. 3 (2000): 166–168.
Lovelace, Joyce. “Clear Focus.” American Craft 75, no. 4 (2015): 66–73.
Mena, Diego Jesus Bartesaghi. “‘Color Riot’ — A vibrant look at Navajo resilience, at Montclair Art Museum.” Montclair Local, October 9, 2021.
Moreno, Gean. “SITElines 2018.” Art in America 106, no. 10, 2018: 103–104.
Nixon, Lindsay. “Indigenous Art Is So Camp.” Canadian Art, November 21, 2019.
Rana, Matthew. “Immigration and Colonization: Grappling with Past and Present New Mexico.” Frieze, September 17, 2018.
Ryckman, Tatiana. “Sing the Body Non-Electric: INTERWOVEN at MASS Gallery, Austin.” Glasstire, February 18, 2019.
“Shows to See.” American Craft 77, no 1 (2017): 22–23.
Szmulewicz, Ignacio. “Melissa Cody: MASP - Museu de Art de São Paulo Assis Chateaubriand, Avenida Paulista, 1578, October 20, 2023 - January 21, 2024.” Artforum. January 2, 2024. https://www.artforum. com/events/melissa-cody-545813/.
“United States Artists Announces 2022 Fellowships.” Artforum, January 27, 2022.
Vankin, Deborah. “United States Artists announces 2022 fellows, including six L.A. area artists.” Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2022.
Vanzalen, Jessica. “Weaver Melissa Cody on Native Rugs, New Style, and the Heard’s 53rd Annual Indian Market.” Phoenix New Times, March 3, 2011.
“What Made America.” Native American Art Magazine, April/May 2021.
Williams, Maxwell. “Reweaving History.” LALA (Spring 2019).
