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’ paintings line the walls of her studio in Anchorage, Alaska. From “icon portraits” to landscapes, her artwork holds a palpable verve—carrying a panorama of stories, ideas and interpretations with them, often centered on Alutiiq culture and identity.

From April 6-17, Infante Lyons will bring her visual and academic storytelling to Syracuse University as the 2026 . Her two-week residency is organized around the theme of “Visions of Resilience: Sacred Art and Storied Landscapes.” Humanities Center Director Vivian May says she is excited about the many different ways Infante Lyons will engage the community through dialogues, lectures and seminars focused on her art, Indigenous cultural resilience, approaches to environmentalism and environmental activism, storytelling and more. Infante Lyons’ work, says May, “immerses us in a sense of place and asks us to build relationships across boundaries. Infante Lyons visualizes the sacred, imagines the environment and builds stories in ways that invite us to come together and imagine a more just future for all.”

All are welcome to meet Infante Lyons and experience her work in person at an at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, April 7, in Eggers Hall and at other .

Infante Lyons, a painter and multimedia artist whose work engages themes of Indigenous sovereignty, cultural resilience and environmental sustainability, was raised in Anchorage. After earning her bachelor’s degree from Whitman College, she studied at the Viña del Mar Escuela de Bellas Artes and spent 18 years in Chile. Her maternal family is from Kodiak Island—a large island in the Gulf of Alaska and the ancestral homeland of the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq people—where her grandparents were commercial salmon fishers. She is a registered Alutiiq Alaska Native and has tribal affiliation with the Alutiiq/Sugpiaq corporation, Koniag.

“I’m looking forward to conversations about learning from different cultures: the importance of a diverse mindset, the richness of looking at Indigenous cultures, how they see the world,” says Infante Lyons. Turning to the future, she asks: “And then, how can you apply that to a conversation [about] where we go forward? It could be applied to sustainability, or how we get along as human beings, or how we get along with the rest of the world.”

Notably, two new paintings by Infante Lyons will find a permanent home in the Syracuse University Art Museum. Melissa Yuen, curator at the museum, says Infante Lyons’ potrtaits “invite interdisciplinary conversation, highlighting humanity’s relationship with the environment, disrupting Eurocentric worldviews and celebrating the role women play in Alutiiq culture as connectors with the world.”

These as-yet unnamed pieces, to be unveiled on April 7, each depict Alaskan Native women dressed in kuspuks. The works incorporate traditional and contemporary Indigenous designs, and each woman cradles an animal central to Alutiiq culture: a seal pup in one painting, an otter in the other. The compositions echo a “Madonna and Child” style painting, complete with halos and other visual symbols of reverence.

In portraying animals in the style of sacred Orthodox paintings and iconography, Infante Lyons emphasizes an intimate relationship between humans and the natural world—one that opposes Western models of extraction and domination. Relatedly, some of her upcoming events on campus will highlight how Indigenous mindsets forge new pathways for understanding and caring for the environment.

Chie Sakakibara, associate professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies and geography and the environment, says when she came across one of Infante Lyons’ icon portraits, “” she was speechless.

“I was immediately struck by the work’s powerful expressivity, as Linda brings together multiple elements—ancestral presences and sacred, spiritual words—into the present, rather than relegating them to a past that no longer exists,” says Sakakibara.

Sakakibara invites the campus and broader Syracuse community into a shared encounter with Infante Lyons’ artistic wisdom, and hopes the residency will spark some of the same kinds of connections she cultivates with students around traditional and land-based knowledge, cultural resilience, multi-species relations and the continuity of Indigenous storytelling.

For co-host Timur Hammond, associate professor of geography and the environment, Infante Lyons’ residency opens up new points of academic connection, particularly for his Spring 2026 course, ‘Geography of Memory,’ and for strengthening his ongoing collaborations with the (EHN). One of EHN’s projects includes an , developed with Infante Lyons, to help spark discussion and activity in the classroom and community.

While Infante Lyons’ work carries many layers of meaning, her creative process begins without a preconceived agenda. Referencing Syracuse creative writing professor and author George Saunders, Infante Lyons subscribes to the idea that “the muse finds you.” A blank canvas is an invitation for her to explore meaning, and to see her life experiences naturally flow out onto the canvas.

“You come to the studio, you start something, and you may try to have a concept or an idea or a composition, but that will change,” she says. In being open to spontaneous inspiration during this creative process, “you end up with a better piece of artwork,” says Infante Lyons.

She hopes to inspire the same approach in those who come across her art. Her paintings—and the conversations that arise around them—need not uphold a rigid, absolute message. Rather, her work invites an opportunity for thought, exploration and emotion.

Story by Colette Goldstein G’25