Wakpa Triennial Art Festival
Category: Event Calendar
Date and Time
- Sat, Sep 12, 2026 - Sun, Oct 11, 2026
Location
201 N Sibley Street (E 2nd street between Sibley and Jackson)
Details
WHAT IS WAKPA?
Wakpa is Dakota for river. The Wakpa Triennial Art Festival honors the Mississippi River as a living cultural landscape—a sacred site, a historical witness, and a shared community resource. Over the month of September through early October 2026, over forty commissioned artists will transform public space into a collective expression of art, reflection, and belonging.
September 12 – October 11, 2026
See schedule
Theme: A Moment to Pause
The 2026 theme invites artists and audiences to slow down in a time of national division and heightened stakes. Each of the 40+ commissioned artworks is an invitation to reflect—both individually and in conversation with others. The wheat-pasted posters will naturally weather and transform throughout the month, a reminder that all art, all moments, all gatherings have their season.
This festival unfolds on Dakota land. It is co-curated by Angela Two Stars, a Dakota visual artist, and Robert Cozzolino, a curator and scholar of public space. The festival's concept and approach emerged from a series of Critical Conversations held by PASP to center Indigenous perspectives, and from ongoing consultation with an Indigenous Advisory Group whose members serve as a sounding board for Indigenous issues and help steer the festival's development. The festival identifies as an Indigenous arts festival, with coalescing leadership drawn from local Dakota and Ojibwe communities.
ABOUT THE CURATORS
Angela Two Stars
Angela Two Stars is a public artist and curator. She is the director of All My Relations Arts, a project of the Native American Community Development Institute in Minneapolis, MN. Angela is an enrolled member of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate and received her BFA from Kendall College of Art and Design. Angela’s professional arts career began at All My Relations Arts gallery as an exhibiting artist, which then led to further opportunities including her first curatorial role for the exhibition titled, Bring Her Home, Stolen Daughters of Turtle Island, a powerful exhibition highlighting the ongoing epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women. Angela’s public art graces the shores of Bde Maka Ska and honors the Dakota people of Mni Sota. Angela was recently selected as the finalist for the Walker Art Center’s Indigenous Public Art Commission which will be installed in the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden in the fall of 2021.
Robert Cozzolino
Robert Cozzolino, an independent curator, art historian, and critic based in Minneapolis curates collaboratively, in partnership with artists, colleagues, and broad communities. “Starting where you are” is critical to his practice—knowing the immediate context and deeper history of the place in which he works.
