Cultural Awakening: Rebekah Danae’s artistic view of Oklahoma’s future

Artist Rebekah Danae has a lifelong deep connection with open spaces — and a knack for filling them with art.

Growing up in the expansive prairies of Midland, Texas, she spent her youth and early adulthood experimenting with various mediums like ceramics, textiles and paint. After earning her B.F.A. in painting from Baylor, she moved to Oklahoma to join Teach For America in north Tulsa. It was during this time that she experienced something completely foreign to her: Her artistic expression slowed.

“I definitely had a lot of shame around not making art at the rate I anticipated coming to Tulsa,” says Danae. “I was thinking I’d come to Tulsa and have a show in the first couple of years I was there.”

But this unexpected lacuna from artistic creation allowed her to begin her journey into self-healing and community organizing, diving deep into Tulsa’s history. This led Danae to begin actively engaging in her community, giving her a fresh outlook on art and its potential significance to herself and potential audiences. Recognizing that her skills in community organizing could become a part of her artistry, she started exploring the world of experiential art and the concept of social sculpture.

The idea of social sculpture was developed by artist Joseph Beuys in post-war Germany.

In essence, it refers to any activity that contributes to shaping or transforming society. Danae cites Beuys, and the community organizing work President Obama led before going to the White House, as influences as she began this next artistic chapter of her life.

An Artistic and Creative Hub

After this period of respite, Danae began a marathon of intense creation beginning in 2019, starting with a series of five self-portraits in oil.

“The 2019 series shows me processing a lot of the community organizing work, a lot of the things that I learned and that I was angry and frustrated about,” she says.

Amid that self-portrait series, Danae founded A Creative House in 2020, an artists’ collective described as “a matriarchal container for conscious world-building using traditional and innovative artistic mediums.” Collaborators work in mediums ranging from oil painting and leatherwork to augmented reality, fashion and performance art.  

Danae then worked with Dreamland Music Festival in 2022. Originally branded as the World Culture Music Festival, founder Steph Simon renamed the art and music fest post-COVID to pay homage to the Dreamland Theater that was burned during the Tulsa Race Massacre a little over a century ago. The festival’s pivot also seeks to offer attendees a new way of understanding Tulsa’s promise as an artistic and creative hub — which resonates with Danae, who both exhibited at and curated for the festival. 

Danae, in tandem with A Creative House, fashion designer Parker D. Wayne and Oklahoma City-based artist Mat Miller, exhibited work under the title “Westernwear and Liberation For All” which featured Danae’s portraits, Miller’s geo-dome and Grammy-nominated artist Lester Shaw’s vintage Chevy Apache among many works.

The title of this exhibit — designed to resemble the ubiquitous green highway signs that punctuate Oklahoma’s landscape — showcases Danae’s deep fascination with reclaiming imagery and aesthetics linked to Oklahoma, like camo print, trucks, cowboy boots and the fluorescent orange associated with hunting.

“It’s taking imagery that may have represented something different and claiming it as our own,” explains Danae. “I think [the Oklahoma Futurist Movement] has the potential to create more belonging where it’s lacking.”

Perspectives on Oklahoma’s Identity

Danae and A Creative House’s work at Dreamland turned out to be more fruitful than they could imagine. A curator saw their work at the festival and invited the art collective to apply for the 7th Annual Satellite Art Show during Miami Art Week and Art Basel — and a handful of Tulsa artists were selected to exhibit, including Danae.

At this exhibit, Danae presented her self-portrait and westernwear series, which included hats and her custom, handcrafted cowboy boots. Wayne and performance artist Alexander Tamahn exhibited as part of A Creative House, and other Tulsa artists like No Parking Studios (Antonio Andrews, Tyler James, Cruz Thompson, Deren Walker) and Trueson Daugherty presented their art at the Satellite Show. 

Keeping the momentum, Danae and A Creative House began a collaboration with the Oklahoma Fashion Alliance (OFA), led by Wayne. For months, Danae immersed herself in this artistic journey that culminated in the Oklahoma Futurism exhibit featuring The Infinity Barnstorm, hosted by Art House Tulsa on May 6 of this year.

The Infinity Barnstorm is a modular, freestanding barn installation. On the outside of the barn, audiences were invited to explore Danae’s works and OFA’s fashions, which showed differing perspectives on what Oklahoma meant to them and what it could mean in the future.

On the inside, visitors were transported into an infinity mirror room, cushioned by a ground of straw and enhanced with projections contrasting the rustic, unassuming barn façade. Danae cited Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms as an influence on this work.

“The idea of the barn is that it’s some sort of womb-like portal or imagining the future of Oklahoma. It has this very grotesque, dilapidated outside … and then the inside is reflective of ourselves,” says Danae. 

The two-night exhibit culminated on May 7, with OFA designers, models and artists putting on a fashion show that Danae describes as a barnstorm: “a theater term, in reference to performances (usually featuring short action pieces to suit vulgar tastes) in upstate New York barns.”

The turnout for the exhibit was significant, and included notable attendees from across the country, like the international punk band Pussy Riot.

“I really believe that Tulsans in the middle of the country, post-Trump presidency, have something to say,” says Danae. “I’ve been in and out of museums from New York to L.A. … our voices aren’t in these spaces. Our voices have just as much to say, if not a more powerful and unique perspective as to what is going on now.”

Looking to the Future

After the Infinity Barnstorm, Danae has taken a creative pause to rest and reflect on where her practice has taken her in the past four years. She’s in talks for The Infinity Barnstorm to be exhibited at museums, while applying for artist residencies across the country and completing commissions. And, finally, a massive 9-foot canvas has been calling her name — the one canvas she had been saving as the closing punctuation of her 2019 self-portrait series.  

One thing is clear: Danae is not afraid to take up space. She’s showing audiences the promise of Oklahoma, whether exhibiting amid galleries across the globe or the spacious plains of her home.

Members and co-collaborators in A Creative House artist collective include Alexander Tamahn (multi-disciplinary artist and dancer), Jenee Stacier (multi-disciplinary artist), Chris Vanndy (VR artist and founder of Studio66), Robert Miller (carpenter and multi-disciplinary artist), Cooper Harrison (photographer), Fivish (photographer), Josh Daniel (installation assistant), Wyatt Fulton (installation assistant) and Atlas Fielding (media and film artist).

To learn more about Rebekah Danae, see or purchase her artwork, visit rebekahdanae.com or follow her on Instagram @rebekah__danae.