New York City and the Wargods,   Acrylic on poster,   24 x 36 in   (60.96 x 91.44 cm)   2016    PRIVATE COLLECTION

I was living in New York City and working at the iconic Pearl Paint on Canal Street when the September 11 tragedy occurred. The city shut down, beginning at Canal Street and moving downtown. A few weeks later, I noticed a poster leaning against the sale section at IKEA in Brooklyn. By then, the imagery of the World Trade Center had become difficult to sell; people were understandably tender and guarded in the wake of the tragedy. I bought the poster and placed it in storage, where it remained until 2009, when I took it out again. From it, I began to imagine a skyline filled with symbolic figures meant to be planted in the ground, figures that, as they decay, carry messages from the people back to the creator. 

We'wha,  Acrylic on lucite,  24 x 24 in   (60.96 x 60.96 cm)  2021     Inquire

Painted in the dense, electric solitude of New York City, the work is anchored entirely in the red clay of Middle Village (Halona:wa), the ancestral ground where We’wha historically lived, created, and walked. This immediate, lived proximity infuses the canvas not with historical nostalgia, but with a vibrant, vital presence.

We’wha (1849–1896) the revered Zuni Lhamana cultural leader, weaver, and potter, is lifted out of the sepia-toned, static confines of the ethnographic archive. In place of the museum lens, the work employs a lexicon of hard-edge precision and luminous, solid fields of high-chroma color. By utilizing clean, industrial materials to render a sacred traditional legacy, the painting bypasses formal academic taxonomies. Instead, it strikes a singular, graphic frequency that demands a confrontation in the present tense.

Recently exhibited at Nicodim Gallery in Los Angeles for the exhibition Margaritaville, curated by Devendra Banhart, the portrait serves as a monumental bridge between the sacred interior of the Pueblo and the global contemporary art stage. It is a striking exploration of indigenous gender fluidity, ancestral memory, and the enduring power of place, proving that We'wha's spirit is not a relic of the past, but a living, continuous current.

Zuni Spring,    Acrylic on Masonite,    24 x 36 in  (60.96 x 121.92 cm)  2008    Private Collection

My style is heavily influenced by the Santa Clara painter Helen Hardin. Her sharp geometric structures and incredible line work changed the way I looked at painting. I spent years teaching myself the difficult discipline of the liner brush, wanting to capture that same clean graphic precision to bring historic motifs into a contemporary space.

The figures in this piece are stylized effigies, inspired by the sacred wooden carvings traditionally planted directly into the earth. In their original context, these figures were never meant to last. They were left to the wind and rain, slowly weathering and returning to the ground as part of a natural spiritual cycle.

By painting them in vibrant acrylic and mixed media, I wanted to freeze that elegant geometry in time. It creates a quiet tension, preserving a permanent visual record of something that was always meant to disappear. Now that this painting is in the permanent collection of the National Museum, it serves as a bridge between those temporary, earthly cycles and the eternal.

Jesus Piece interrogates the evolving architecture of faith within a contemporary landscape saturated by consumption and medical reliance. By centering the iconic, hip-hop-inflected pendant, an object popularized by the luxury-obsessed aesthetic of 1990s culture, as immortalized in The Notorious B.I.G.’s "Hypnotize" the work elevates the status of the commodity to that of the divine.

This artwork is encased in an aggressive, radiating texture composed entirely of expired pharmaceutical pills. This material choice serves as a critical commentary on the pervasive, quiet dependence on medication that characterizes modern life. These substances, once active agents of chemical intervention, are here rendered inert, transformed into a halo of failed promise and persistent longing.

By framing the religious icon within this pharmaceutical aura, I highlight a societal shift where the search for "well-being" is increasingly mediated through industrial manufacturing. The pills function as both a literal and symbolic barrier, a fragile, synthetic architecture surrounding a search for transcendence. Jesus Piece, currently residing in New York City, remains an active inquiry into how we package, consume, and idolize the materials that sustain our existence. 

New Beret, Charcoal on paper,  24 x 36 in  (60.96 x 91.44 cm)  Private Collection

In Smoking Kachina, I explore the intersection of the sacred and the mundane through a Cubist lens. Painted on stretched unprimed linen, the work depicts a Kachina taking a momentary pause from the intensity of singing and dancing to enjoy a Marlboro cigarette.

This imagery is deeply personal, rooted in my upbringing in Zuni, where I was constantly surrounded by the presence and influence of Kachinas. By applying a Cubist structure to these familiar, traditional figures, I aim to bridge my heritage with a modern, fragmented artistic language. The resulting piece captures a fleeting, humanized moment in a figure that is otherwise defined by its ceremonial role, grounding the spiritual in a common, everyday habit.

Growing up in the Zuni Pueblo, I was surrounded by the beautiful, grounding presence of traditional art. Painted in 1999, Star Child represents a joyful leap of courage, the exact moment I let myself break free into absolute abstraction and touch the sky.

This piece celebrates a bright, imaginative child of the ancestral people traveling happily through the stars and planets. To me, a child’s imagination is pure magic, a direct line of joy straight to the Creator. On the canvas, traditional roots like the spiral meet a vibrant, starry universe. As a multi-colored beam of light erupts from the traveler’s crown, the painting becomes a celebration of divine wonder, bridging the ancient and the futuristic to show that our stories belong to the infinite, sparkling future.

“Some of Sobé’s work portrays abstract faces and spirits of feminine, intergenerational, Two Spirit figures in states of presence, radiance, and, at moments, suffering. The painting’s visceral effect startled me, and I asked Sobé if we could include the painting in the artwork of my last record. Sobé’s work has a charge of urgent disruption, emotional clarity, and vividness, with portraits that reflect centuries of gracious tradition, violence, moral authority, inspired curiosity, and confounding survival strategy. The way Sobé has at times bound Two Spirit portraiture in conversation with images of Western figures from 20th Century underground queerdom is complex, decisive, and clarion. Sobé’s work is a revelation, articulating a new conversation, and drawing a generous teaching window.”  

Anohni