NATCHIQ | ONKEEHQ | ISUWIQ Indigenous Artists Honor the Seal



Exhibition Identity  
Environmental Graphics



I designed the exhibition identity for Natchiq | Onkeehq | Isuwiq : Indigenous Artists Honor the Seal at the RISD Museum, developing the title lockup and extending it into a full visual system across the exhibition's touch-points. The show, organized by guest curators Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi (Alutiiq), Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich (Inupiaq), and Elizabeth James-Perry (Wampanoag), traces the deep, ongoing relationships Indigenous seafaring peoples hold with seals, bringing together Inuit prints, drawings, and carvings alongside contemporary textiles, photographs, and installations by Alaska Native and Inuit artists.

Designing the identity meant working closely with the curators, exhibition designers, and the copywriter at the RISD Museum to make sure the system honored the specificity and weight of the exhibition's subject, while remaining flexible enough to carry across signage, print, and digital applications.


    Golga Oscars’s Beaded bag, a major art piece in the exhibition.


  Iterations for title lockup
   Process for title lockup, using rounded corners to allude to the water




Process for the seal motif







Label design, extending the visual system.





Testing the size of the seal motifs, that needed to be painted. 


Working in close collaboration with the exhibition designer to understand the size of the graphics on a digital model. 
Additional information graphics.

Map highlighting the indigenous groups represented in the exhibition. 


Section titles for the exhibit. 





2026, for the RISD Museum, exhibition curated by Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi, Erin Ggaadimits Ivalu Gingrich, and Elizabeth James-Perry. Supervised by Brendan Campbell, Jeremy Radtke, María Fernanda Mancera and Stephen Wing.   prevnext

SAACHI MEHTA

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