From April 6 to 17, Linda Infante Lyons will bring her visual and academic storytelling to Syracuse University as the Humanities Center’s 2026 Jeannette K. Watson Distinguished Visiting Professor in the Humanities. Her two-week residency, organized around the theme Visions of Resilience: Sacred Art & Storied Landscapes, is co-sponsored by the Maxwell Dean’s Office and hosted by Maxwell Associate Professors Chie Sakakibara and Timur Hammond of the Geography and the Environment Department.

Infante Lyons is a painter and multimedia artist whose work engages themes of Indigenous sovereignty, cultural resilience and environmental sustainability. Raised in Anchorage, she earned a B.A. from Whitman College, studied at the Viña del Mar Escuela de Bellas Artes, and spent 18 years in Chile. Her maternal family is from Kodiak Island—the ancestral homeland of the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq people—where her grandparents were commercial salmon fishers. She is a registered Alutiiq Alaska Native with tribal affiliation with the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq corporation, Koniag.

Her portraits place Alaskan Native women in the visual language of Orthodox sacred painting—complete with halos and symbols of reverence—while centering animals at the heart of Alutiiq life. Two new paintings, to be unveiled at an opening event scheduled for April 7 at the Maxwell School, each depict a woman in a kuspuk cradling an animal central to Alutiiq culture: a seal pup in one, an otter in the other. Both works will enter Syracuse University Art Museum’s permanent collection.

“It’s a symbol of what Alutiiq culture would consider our kinship with animals,” Infante Lyons said. “All of the elements in our landscape are considered sacred, sentient. There’s no hierarchy in our place in the world.”

For Sakakibara, also an associate professor of Native American and Indigenous studies in the College of Arts and Sciences, the connection to Infante Lyons’ work is both scholarly and deeply personal. She is finishing a book on Infante Lyons’ career and its significance for Alaska Native environmentalism and community well-being. She recalls being stopped in her tracks the first time she encountered one of Infante Lyons’ icon portraits.

“I was immediately struck by the work's powerful expressivity, as Linda brings together multiple elements—ancestral presences and sacred, spiritual worlds—into the present, rather than relegating them to a past that no longer exists,” Sakakibara said. “Linda’s residency will offer a rare and invaluable opportunity to hear directly from an artist about the responsibilities, ethics and relationships that shape and sustain her work.”

For Hammond, the residency opens new points of academic connection, particularly for his spring 2026 course, Geography of Memory, and strengthens ongoing collaborations with the Engaged Humanities Network’s Environmental Storytelling CNY project.

Read the full story at the Syracuse University Humanities Center's news page.