Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Wilding at Fruitmarket from 07.11.25–01.02.26

My work comes right from a visceral place – deep deep – as though my roots extend beyond the soles of my feet into sacred soils. Can I take those feelings and attach them to the passer by? To my dying breath, and my last tube of burnt sienna, I will try’.

The first posthumous exhibition in a public gallery or museum of the work of the artist, activist, educator and curator Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation.

This exhibition was conceived in conversation with the artist before her sad and sudden death at the beginning of 2025 and will be the first time her work has been seen in Scotland. The exhibition’s title came from the artist, who from our earliest conversations wanted the exhibition to engage with the history and politics of land stewardship. Her tribe has links with Scotland through Charles Duncan McDonald (1897– 1995), a founding member of the Tribal Council of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, whose grandfather emigrated from Loch Torridon, Scotland in 1838. Smith was as interested in who owns, controls and cares for the land in Scotland as she was in land rights in the US, part of her dedication to justice and visibility for Native American people, not as part of the history of the US, but as fundamental to its present and future.

This exhibition includes paintings and a large canoe sculpture made by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith especially for Fruitmarket, together with a selection of paintings from throughout her career. With important works from her ‘I see red’ series of the 1980s; works that take a critical and creative look at the map of the US; and paintings from her last series of ‘Tierra Madre’ mother earth figures from writer and conservationist Rachel Carson to Native American activist Wilma Mankiller; the exhibition is an opportunity to get to know the compelling work of this artist attuned to the importance of paying attention and taking action.