In Practice: Raven Halfmoon

Oklahoma-based sculptor and painter Raven Halfmoon is a Caddo, Choctaw and Otoe Missouria artist known for creating monumental hand-pinched clay sculptures that engage with Indigenous identity, craft traditions, and female lineage.

First taught to make clay vessels by Caddo elders at the age of 13, before continuing her education in ceramics, painting and cultural anthropology, Halfmoon moulds ancestral knowledge into her wider creative practice using methods drawn from Caddo coiled clay pottery, forging a powerful dualism between ancient techniques, and contemporary forms and iconography.

Created during a residency at UAP foundry in New York State, Halfmoon’s first bronze sculpture, The Guardians 2024, depicts two back-to-back figures, bisected with colour – representing the artist and her maternal ancestors, and the four directions of the world in American First Nations mythology.

Marking the acquisition of the large-scale sculpture by the National Gallery of Australia, filmmaker Shaandiin Tome connects with the artist at her studio in Norman, Oklahoma for the profile series In Practice. Surrounded by her raw, gestural figures, Halfmoon reflects on the influence of monumentality and inherited understanding, and the visible mark of emotion and history left in the surface of her works.

In Practice: Raven Halfmoon is part of a series with NOWNESS profiling international artists that have recently been acquired into the national collection. Watch the first two films in the series, In Practice: Jeffery Gibson and In Practice: Dana Schutz.

The Guardians will be on display in Gallery 10 from 18 July 2026, and in the National Sculpture Garden from 2028.

This film is part of the National Gallery's Know My Name initiative, celebrating the work of all women artists with an aim of enhancing understanding of their contribution to the global cultural landscape.