Photograph courtesy of Google, Mountain View CA

Angelica Trimble-Yanu is a Creative Project Coordinator, Designer, and Visual Artist based in Oakland, California. She is an enrolled member of the Oglála Lakȟóta Sioux Nation from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota.

Angelica holds a BFA in Fine Art from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and a certicate in Human-Centered Design. Her work spans disciplines and mediums, exploring themes of identity, connection, and community. Her practice has been exhibited widely, including a permanent installation at Google’s flagship store, the de Young Museum, MarinMOCA, and internationally at the Palazzo Albrizzi-Capello during the 2022 Venice Art Biennale. In 2023, she was nominated for the prestigious SECA Art Award by SFMOMA following her debut solo exhibition, BLACK SUN, at MRKT Gallery in San Francisco.

A strong advocate for community-engaged practice, Angelica has participated in public residencies, exhibitions, and artist talks with institutions such as the Museum of Archaeology Alabama, Google, the Institute of Contemporary Art San Francisco, the Berkeley Art Center, Kala Art Institute, Five Oaks Museum, Oregon State University, and Santa Clara University.

Her creative work has been recognized with multiple honors, including awards in writing and printmaking from PNCA and an Expert Printmaking Award from Zealous UK. Her work and perspective have been featured in numerous local and international publications, including PBS NewsHour, The Oregonian, Diablo Magazine, Urban Life Wash Park, Divide Art Magazine, and The Palo Alto Daily.

Recent News & Career Highlights:

PBS News Hour: Indigenous artists on reclaiming authenticity

Urban Life Wash Park Magazine: Angelica Trimble-Yanu

Angelica Trimble-Yanu BFA’19 brings together tradition and technology for the artwork in Google’s new flagship store

Emily Bolles: Who are your inspirations?

Angelica: “James Lavadour, A painter and Printmaker from Walla Walla, Washington. Lavadours landscapes introduced me to a new perspective of landscape. how landscape can serve as a vessel for communication and tradition, how can landscape serve as visual language. I am influenced by his first collaborative sculpture with the Walla Walla Foundry. “Ruby Lift” I am interested in Lavadours process in this particular piece. Lavadour took his paintings and translated them into 3D forms through digital process. He photographed and scanned his painting through a digital architecture program. He then rendered a 3D map through the painting. Lavadour’s brush strokes from the black and white abstract painting transformed into a three dimensional topographic reality of the Columbia River. The Columbia is a sacred space for him and his ancestors. I am interested in this reflection of intuitive and collective memory Indigenous nations have to their ancestral homelands. The marks transformed physically into who he is and where he is from. the mark making he used reflected his sacred homelands in Walla Walla, Washington. James experienced an unexpected phenomena with the uncanny reflection of his tribes homeland within the physical dimensions of ​Ruby LIft​.”

Studio Visit at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California. Angelica talks about her practice and application process for the Berkeley Film Archive’s 2021 Film grant. Art Direction and Photography by Morgan Schmidt-Feng (FilmSight Productions) and Pam Uzzell.

“Holding Ceremony” Exhibition reception and artist conversation on November 11, 2022. Featuring Angelica Trimble-Yanu, Alma Lepla, Tricia Rainwater and Lynette Betancur. Please note: This is an excerpt, contact artist for link to full video.

“Makha (Earth) 2020” 4:16s

In April of 2020, Angelica was commissioned by FilmSight Productions to participate in their COVIDeos film project. COVIDeos was inspired by the Depression Era’s WPA program that supported and offered resources to struggling artists and writers. Bay Area’s Filmsight Productions took the initiative to create a similar project to support independent artists. Having lost access to her Studio and ability to travel for site specific projects, Angelica created Makhá utilizing footage from her trip to South Dakota in 2018 with current footage.The pandemic forced Angelica to utilize modes of film from 2018 and re-cycle her sculptures while still exploring concepts of Identity, Indigenous homeland, and traditional Lakota knowledge through the language of ancestral memory and sacred space. While exploring the processes of narrative and documentation, Angelica continues to use movement as a container to articulate her innate connection to cultural landscapes. Makha became a reflection on her struggles and resilience being a working artist through an impactful moment in history. Moving forward, Angelica has created an ongoing series of Monotype sculptures and shadow boxes, sculpted and created on the ancestral homelands of the Ohlone people here in the Bay Area. 

Makha was exhibited for the first time at the De Young Museum’s De Young Open Film Program in 2020, and was featured in The Power of Moving Image Artist Talk at the De Young Museum with Curator-in-Charge of Contemporary Art and Programming at the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, Claudia Schmuckli

Interviews with Leaders x Design and Art Heals All Wounds