ELISA HARKINS

2026 SOZO FELLOW
ARTIST AND COMPOSER
TULSA, OK

Elisa Harkins is a Cherokee, Muscogee (Creek), and Japanese artist, composer, performer, and singer working across sound, performance, video, textiles, and installation. Living and working on the Muscogee Reservation, Harkins creates interdisciplinary works that center Indigenous language, song, futurity, and community knowledge systems. Her practice often combines electronic music, Indigenous musical traditions, choreography, sculpture, and collaborative performance to explore the relationships between history, contemporary Indigenous life, and speculative futures.

Harkins is widely recognized for integrating Indigenous languages and traditional songs into experimental electronic composition and contemporary art contexts. Her ongoing project, Teach Me a Song, documents and shares Indigenous songs through collaborative recordings, video portraits, scores, and textile works. Her performances, including Wampum / ᎠᏕᎳ ᏗᎦᎫᏗ and Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ, bring together electronic sound, movement, vocal performance, and Indigenous futurist frameworks in live settings that move between concert, dance, and installation.

Her work has been presented internationally at museums, galleries, and performance venues, including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, REDCAT, The Broad, PICA’s Time-Based Art Festival, Montréal Arts Interculturels, and On the Boards. Harkins has collaborated with artists, musicians, and dancers across disciplines, including Kronos Quartet, and has released recordings through Western Front.

Harkins received her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in 2015. Alongside her artistic practice, she facilitates workshops, hand drum-making gatherings, and mentorship opportunities for Indigenous musicians. Through sound, performance, and collective practice, her work insists on Indigenous presence not as historical memory, but as a living and evolving future.