Catharsis Conference, November 2025
Quannah Chasinghorse & Acosia Red Elk in conversation with Claude Grunitzky (Wednesday, November 12, 2025).
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Guestroom #2: Jeremy Dennis opened with this Catharsis Conference: an evening of conversation, ceremony, and sound marking the second installment of the Catharsis Arts Foundation's exhibition series at Atelier Jolie. Quannah Chasinghorse and Acosia Red Elk joined moderator Claude Grunitzky to explore Indigenous presence, land, visibility, and the power of art as living cultural memory, in conversation with the work of Shinnecock photographer Jeremy Dennis. The evening concluded with a jingle dress performance by Acosia Red Elk, followed by a flute performance by Ojibwe flutist Darren Thompson.
Quannah Chasinghorse is a Hän Gwich'in and Sicangu-Oglala Lakota model, activist, and curator, born on Navajo Nation land in Tuba City, Arizona, and raised in Alaska. A fourth-generation land protector for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, she has advocated for Indigenous sovereignty, climate justice, and the rights of missing and murdered Indigenous women before Congress and at international climate summits. She launched her modeling career in 2020 with Calvin Klein before signing with IMG Models, becoming the first Indigenous woman to walk in a Chanel show and appearing on the covers of Vogue Mexico, Vogue Japan, V Magazine, Elle, and Porter. Named to Time's Next 100 list in 2021 and Forbes 30 Under 30 in 2022, she uses fashion as an act of cultural affirmation, consistently wearing the work of Indigenous designers. For Guestroom #2: Jeremy Dennis, she served as co-curator alongside Claude Grunitzky.
Acosia Red Elk is a seven-time world champion jingle dress dancer and an enrolled member of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, of Umatilla, Cayuse, Walla Walla, Nez Perce, and Colville heritage on her father's side — and a descendant of Chief Joseph. She began competing professionally in 1998, attending up to fifty powwows a year, and went on to win seven world championships at the Gathering of Nations Powwow in Albuquerque, including eight consecutive competition wins in 2014 alone. She is also the Head Woman Dancer title holder and a member of Indigenous Enterprise, the intertribal collective of champion powwow dancers that has performed at venues including the Sydney Opera House and the Joyce Theater in Manhattan. Combining her powwow practice with yoga, she created "powwow yoga," a healing movement form rooted in Indigenous dance traditions.
Darren Thompson is an Ojibwe/Tohono O'odham flute player, multimedia journalist, and educator from the Lac du Flambeau Ojibwe Indian Reservation in northern Wisconsin. A self-taught musician, he first encountered the Native American flute — called bibigwan in Ojibwe — at a cultural festival while studying at Marquette University, and has since become one of its foremost practitioners and advocates. His performances weave together historical songs recorded in the early 1900s with original compositions, honoring the instrument as an act of cultural survival. He performed the national anthem on the Native American flute for the Phoenix Suns in 2023 — one of only two people to have done so in professional sports history — and has appeared as a guest solo artist with the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra. His album Between Earth and Sky earned him a Native American Music Award nomination for Flutist of the Year.
Jeremy Dennis (b. 1990) is a contemporary fine art photographer, an enrolled Tribal Member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, New York, and the founder and lead artist of Ma's House & BIPOC Art Studio, Inc. — a nonprofit art space and residency program on the Shinnecock Reservation dedicated to uplifting Indigenous and BIPOC artists. His work centers Indigenous identity, culture, and the legacies of colonial assimilation, using photography to stage cinematic narratives rooted in Native oral stories, history, and contemporary life. His long-running series Stories — Indigenous Oral Stories, Dreams and Myths (2013–ongoing) transforms ancient legends into photographs that collapse the boundary between myth and the present. His project On This Site — Indigenous Long Island, supported by a 2016 Dreamstarter Grant from Running Strong for American Indian Youth and a 2020 Dreamstarter Gold award of $50,000, maps culturally significant Native sites across Long Island through photography and an interactive online platform. He holds a BA in Studio Art from Stony Brook University and an MFA from Pennsylvania State University, and has exhibited at the Parrish Art Museum, the Armory Show, Expo Chicago, ZONAMACO FOTO in Mexico City, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others.