Nicholas Galanin, an Indigenous artist, of Tlingit/Unangax̂ descent, creates powerful works that challenge colonial narratives and assert Indigenous sovereignty through material, gesture, and metaphor.

In Escape From Inertia, the artist presents a wolf pelt, which is a symbol of wildness, resistance, and survival, cast aside like a shed skin. Its flattened, inert form evokes both a death and a transformation, implicating histories of violence. As with many of Galanin’s sculptural works, traditional materials meet conceptual urgency, offering viewers an encounter with displacement, erasure, and resilience.

Exhibited in Citizen Animalia (2020), this sculpture reflects Galanin’s wider practice: conceptual, ceremonial, and exacting. His work is held in the Whitney, MoMA, and Denver Art Museum. Escape From Inertia is both gesture and statement—marking a moment of stillness charged with the will to move.