Allison Akootchook Warden (aka AKU-MATU)

Allison Akootchook Warden (aka AKU-MATU) is an Iñupiaq poet, installation artist, and performance artist and a tribal member of the Native Village of Kaktovik. In 2022, her poem “we acknowledge ourselves” was featured in the Land Acknowledgements issue of Poetry Magazine, Alaska Quarterly Review published her poem “portal traveler,” and her poetry was part of Insidious Rising, a hyphen-labs project for Google Arts and Cultures. At the 2022 Time Based Arts Festival at the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, she debuted “taigruaq,” a performance art piece with collaborator Aqqalu Berthelesen. She is the recipient of a 2019 United States Artist Fellowship in traditional arts, a 2022 Art Matters Artist2Artist Fellowship in interdisciplinary arts, a 2022 Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship in music composition, a 2018 Rasmuson Individual Artist Fellowship in new genre, and a 2018 Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Artist Fellowship in music. She is currently working on an album, writing poetry, and is scheduled to open her social practice installation The Inuit Futurism Center at the Anchorage Museum. She lives in a cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska.