Mikayla Patton (b. 1991, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation) is a visual artist whose material-based practice spans sculpture, installation, papermaking, printmaking, quillwork, and beadwork. Known for her use of repurposed paper, her work is sculptural and often embedded or stitched with found materials. Grounded in cultural methodologies, her practice centers personal and archival research to explore Indigenous autonomy, Lakȟóta ontologies, and material agency. Patton belongs to the Oglála Lakȟóta Nation and is based in Pennsylvania. She holds a BFA in Studio Arts from the Institute of American Indian Arts. She is a 2024 Forge Project Fellow and a 2023 Joan Mitchell Fellow. Her work has also been supported by the Ucross Foundation, the Native Arts and Culture Foundation, First Peoples Fund, the Harpo Foundation, the Indian Arts Research Center, and the RAiR Foundation.
Patton’s work is held in collections including the Beth Rudin DeWoody Collection, the Tia Collection, the Gochman Collection, and the Denver Art Museum. She has presented solo exhibitions at the Al Held Foundation in Boiceville and Chiaroscuro Contemporary Art in Santa Fe. She has participated in group exhibitions at the Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick; the North Dakota Museum of Art in Grand Forks; All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis; the Museum of Contemporary Native Arts in Santa Fe; and the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans. In 2026, Patton’s work will join a renowned group of contemporary Indigenous American artists from the Tia Collection in a major exhibition titled Hold to this Earth at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park in the UK.
— My approach is shaped by cultural knowledge and the ways memory, land, and experience are carried through materials. I often engage with paper, porcupine quills, glass beads, plants, ash, soil, and smoke as these materials are familial. My process of tearing, pulping, pressing, and embedding reflects the act of record-keeping, where each action carries a sense of care and accountability. Through modes of making, I explore the weight of inherited knowledge and the quiet presence of things both seen and unseen.