Warren VanRyzin

Bio

Warren Van Ryzin is a Gen Z indigenous artist who focuses primarily in ceramic works and in digital spaces online. He has shown both nationally and internationally and has work in private collections. Born and raised in the midwest he had access to the internet at a young age where he found humor, entertainment, and inspiration from early memes and phenomena online. Warren is an alumni from the Kansas City Art Institute graduating in the Covid class of 2020. There he dedicated time to replicate old world ceramic techniques to use them to make memes into ancient artifacts. The fall after he attended the University of Arkansas’s post-baccalaureate program for two years. Creating new work reflecting his time online since childhood and his relationship with his own indigenous heritage. Warren lives back in Kansas City making new works both out of clay and online.

Artist statement

The combination of contemporary internet culture with indigenous ceramic history is a direct reflection of my cultural identity. Being born from an indigenous mother who was adopted into a white family as a young child off of a Shoshone-Paiute reservation drives my inclusion of indigenous ceramic techniques and iconography. The separation of that part of my culture and ancestry led me to the internet at a young age to do my own research on my personal lineage.That quickly became interspersed with a massive absorption of early online memes and content still continuing to this day being a constant source of inspiration.

The presence of the internet and digital aesthetics in my work often serves as a stand-in for my own personal indigenous culture that could have been present. The humor used in contemporary memes and digital spaces are often seen as being existential and nihilistic in nature using tropes of escapism in a post utopian society. I make pieces appear as artifacts trolling the viewer into putting my work in a historical context to have them digest and analyze memes in tandem with indigenous culture. Making it a practical tool to talk about issues of indigenous cultural assimilation and identity in our present time in both digital and physical spaces.