Designer
Artistic Infusion Program
Kimberly Fulton Orozco is a multidisciplinary artist and storyteller. Her work explores the intergenerational effects of assimilation under hegemony and the formation of personal identity articulated to culture through the lens of survivance. Her investigation of this subject matter considers the complexity of communication, fragmentation of collective memory, the persistence of cultural principles through abstraction, poetry, and blossoming Indigenous futures.
Kimberly is a Kaigani Haida Raven from the Yahgw’ laanaas clan of Craig, Alaska, and received the name Sáandlaanaay, which, put simply, means, “first sunrise,” referring to a Haida origin story. She is a citizen of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. Born in Ridgecrest, California, halfway between the homelands of her maternal and paternal grandmothers in Jalisco, Mexico, and Craig, Alaska, respectively, Kimberly creates works that reflect the divergent influences that continue to shape her today, including her Mexican and Scottish ancestral heritage.
Today, Kimberly works as an artist in Atlanta, Georgia, where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in drawing, painting, and printmaking from Georgia State University. Kimberly’s work has been exhibited in galleries and museums nationally and internationally, and her writing has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine.
She is currently a Master of Fine Arts student at the Institute of American Indian Arts Studio Arts program. In 2023 she became one of the first Indigenous artists selected by the United States Mint for the Artistic Infusion Program.