Ramona Sakiestewa

Ramona Sakiestewa (born 1949) is a Hopi tapestry artist and designer based in Santa Fe who has spent more than fifty years translating the ancient textile traditions of the Pueblo world into contemporary art objects of refined beauty and cultural depth. Her woven tapestries draw on Hopi weaving patterns, kachina imagery, and the geometric logic of Pueblo ceremonial design, producing works that are simultaneously deeply rooted in tradition and unmistakably of the present moment. The Hopi weaving tradition is one of the most demanding and sophisticated in the Indigenous world, requiring mastery of both technical process and symbolic language. Sakiestewa's tapestries demonstrate complete command of that tradition while extending it into new territory: larger scale, more complex color relationships, a formal boldness that pushes the inherited patterns toward pure pictorial event. Her work hangs in major museum collections and in the lobbies of significant public institutions, where it functions both as art object and as ongoing evidence of Hopi cultural vitality. Beyond her studio practice, Sakiestewa's influence on American design has been substantial. She has collaborated with the design firm Knoll, producing fabric collections that bring Hopi visual sensibility into the world of contemporary interior design. She served on the design team for the National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. - one of the most significant architectural and cultural projects in the history of Indigenous America - helping to shape the museum's visual identity from the ground up. Her tapestries are held in the collections of the Smithsonian Institution, the Denver Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, the White House, and other major institutions. She has received numerous awards and fellowships recognizing both her artistic achievement and her broader cultural contributions, and is considered one of the most significant Hopi artists of her generation.