Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2013. As a textile artist and designer she derives her inspiration from family history, Ojibwe heritage and the broader Native American experience. Skillfully and intuitively working with both natural and synthetic materials, Thompson’s multimedia artwork expands various textile traditions’ inherited ways of being and becoming.

Thompson had her first solo exhibition Where I Fit at All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis in 2014, and was most recently included in the Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture in 2024 and the 2023 Renwick Invitational Sharing Honors and Burdens at the Smithsonian American Art Museum and Renwick Gallery. Recent solo exhibitions include Loves Me, Loves Me Not, Mardag Gallery, Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN (2023); Just Friends, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2022), and Dakobijige/ She Ties Things Together, Watermark Center, Bemidji, MN (2021). She has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions in Minnesota including at the Plains Art Museum, Minnesota Textile Center, Walker Art Center, and Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Thompson has been awarded grants and awards, including in 2023 the All My Relations and Bockley Gallery Jim Denomie Scholarship, Jerome Foundation Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and First Peoples Fund Seeding Cultural Treasures Grant. Others have been awarded from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Her work is collected by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minnesota Historical Society, North Dakota Museum of Art, Hood Museum, Tia Collection, and Field Museum, among others. 

In addition to her fine arts practice, Thompson runs a knitwear business known as Makwa Studio. She has alsoworked on curating special exhibits in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, including atTwo Rivers Gallery, the McKnight Foundation and the Minnesota Museum of American Art.

As a (Fond Du Lac) Ojibwe woman of mixed heritage, I work with an intuitive hand to bridge cultures and traditions gathered from firsthand experiences. I derive my inspiration from the history of my heritage and what it means to be a contemporary Native woman. 

My work calls attention to its materiality pushing the viewer’s traditional understanding of textiles and “Native Art”. I explore materials in my work by incorporating multimedia elements such as photographs, beer caps, ribbon, and beadwork. Each of my pieces are built around a strong conceptual narrative, digging deeper into notions of identity by focusing on issues of cultural appropriation, Native authenticity, relationships, and loss and grief. 

Being transparent is a fundamental value in my working process.  Although my work is very rooted in personal experiences I aim to educate others about the Native community about both our collective and individualized experiences. I use textiles as a way to contain memory, to reflect, and to tell a difficult story.

makwastudio@gmail.com