Heavy Hitters | Maggie Thompson + Cameron Patricia Downey + Emma Beatrez

These three artists are at the top of their games and were each given free rein on one of the three exhibition spaces at the Minneapolis HAIR+NAILS gallery.

Maggie Thompson’s photo series “She Trains” examines power dynamics within mixed relationships, specifically between Native women and white men. An exquisite beaded BDSM pup mask serves as a key symbol; indigenizing the "pup" and suggesting an act of teaching or reorientation, where he learns to see and understand Native identity and experience on her terms. Thompson presents both the beaded mask and photo series in this show. Thompson has exhibited with HAIR+NAILS once before in the gallery’s curation “Human Scale” at Rochester Art Center in 2021.

Cameron Patricia Downey is an anti-disciplinary artist whose work oscillates between photography, film, body, sculpture, curation and otherwise. The incidental, the precarious and the misremembered are central to this work which strives to archive, unfurl, make-altar-of and bring fantasy to the Blues of Black life, craft and relation. Adornments gather in glamorous community and crowd around their spectres; communion sought with the objects themselves. Central for Downey is a belief that form is not just a record keeper, but a philosophy of feeling in and of itself. The thing is the way. For Heavy Hitters, Downey contributes a suite of new found object sculptures. Downey has exhibited with HAIR+NAILS in numerous exhibitions since 2019. Their work is also currently in “ROTATE” at HAIR+NAILS NYC and on view in the Walker Art Center’s Permanent Collection exhibition.

Drawing on influences including the occult, her midwestern upbringing, and the hidden and overt symbolism and rituals inherent in our everyday lives, Emma Beatrez’s work encompasses sculpture, painting, video and installation. In her oil paintings Beatrez harnesses magic from the commonplace with a keen eye for the subtleties of gaze. In Heavy Hitters she will also be exhibiting sculpture and installation work with HAIR+NAILS for the first time since her 2022 solo show Technolust 3000. Balancing texture, context, and powerful root imagery, Beatrez explores the poetics of weapons, tools, game pieces, and how we engage with the world. Emma Beatrez has exhibited with HAIR+NAILS since 2019 with solo shows in both the Minneapolis and New York galleries and an upcoming solo painting presentation at Untitled Art, Miami Beach in December 2025.

ARTIST BIOS:

Maggie Thompson (Fond du Lac Ojibwe) was born and raised in Minneapolis, MN. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in Textiles at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in 2013. As a textile artist and designer she derives her inspiration from family history, Ojibwe heritage and the broader Native American experience. Skillfully and intuitively working with both natural and synthetic materials, Thompson’s multimedia artwork expands various textile traditions’ inherited ways of being and becoming. Thompson had her first solo exhibition Where I Fit at All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis in 2014, and was most recently included in the 2024 exhibition Shape of Power: Stories of Race and American Sculpture at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Recent solo exhibitions include Intentions, Museum of Contemporary Art, Santa Fe, NM (2025), Loves Me, Loves Me Not, Mardag Gallery, Franconia Sculpture Park, Shafer, MN (2023); Just Friends, Bockley Gallery, Minneapolis, MN (2022), and Dakobijige/ She Ties Things Together, Watermark Center, Bemidji, MN (2021). She has exhibited in numerous group exhibitions including at the Detroit Institute of Art, Plains Art Museum, Minnesota Textile Center, Walker Art Center, and Minneapolis Institute of Art.

Thompson has been awarded grants and awards, including the All My Relations and Bockley Gallery Jim Denomie Scholarship, Jerome Foundation Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, and First Peoples Fund Seeding Cultural Treasures and Business Leadership Grants. Others have been awarded from the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation. Her work is collected by the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Minnesota Museum of American Art, Minnesota Historical Society, North Dakota Museum of Art, Hood Museum, Tia Collection, and Field Museum, among others. In addition to her fine arts practice, Thompson runs a knitwear business known as Makwa Studio. She is also an emerging curator of contemporary Native art, and has worked on curating special exhibits in Minnesota’s Twin Cities, including at Two Rivers Gallery, the McKnight Foundation and the Minnesota Museum of American Art.
www.makwastudio.com
Instagram: @makwa_studio

Cameron Patricia Downey (b.1998, N. Minneapolis, Minnesota) is an anti-disciplinary artist whose work oscillates between sculpture, photography, film, body, curation and otherwise. Peering into the private lives of objects, seeing instruction in the incidental, the precarious and the misremembered, Downey’s work strives to archive, unfurl, make-altar-of and lend fantasy to the Blues of Black life and relation.

Downey’s work has been exhibited by HAIR+NAILS, Minneapolis and New York; Kunstraum Kreuzberg/Bethanien, Berlin; Engage Projects, Chicago; Midway Contemporary Art, Minneapolis; T293 Gallery, Rome; Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; James Fuentes, New York; Strada Gallery, New York. They were the 2023 recipient of the Carolyn Glasoe Bailey Foundation’s MN Art Prize and are a recent artist in residence with the Walker Art Center’s Moving Image department, The Yale Peabody Museum, Juxtaposition Arts, Loghaven Artist Residency and Second Shift Studio Space of Saint Paul. Downey graduated from Columbia University in 2021 with a double concentration in visual art and environmental science and is currently a second-year MFA candidate in sculpture at the Yale School of Art. Cameron Patricia Downey has exhibited frequently with HAIR+NAILS since 2019 including Downey’s solo show “Lord Split Me Open” (2023).
www.cameronpdowney.com
Instagram: @cameronpatricia_

Emma Beatrez (b. 1995, New Prague, MN) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Minneapolis. They graduated from Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 2020 with a MFA in Interdisciplinary Studio Art and received their BFA with an emphasis in painting at North Dakota State University in 2018. Beatrez is the co-founder/curator at Night Club gallery in St. Paul alongside artist Lee Noble.

Solo shows include “Polyester” (HAIR+NAILS NY, 2025), “Device of Love” (Nemeth Art Center, Park Rapids, MN, 2024), “TECHNOLUST 3000” (HAIR+NAILS, Minneapolis, 2022), and “Quarter Turn” (Fierman Gallery, NYC, 2022). Other recent shows include a two-person show at LVL3 (Chicago), and group shows at Enari (Amsterdam), Nathalie Karg Gallery (NYC), Swivel Gallery (Brooklyn), Guts Gallery (London), Anthony Gallery (Chicago) and in collaboration with Lee Noble at the Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis). Emma Beatrez is represented by HAIR+NAILS Gallery, Minneapolis.
www.emmabeatrez.com
Instagram: @emma.beatrez

OPEN GALLERY HOURS:
walk-ins welcome: Thursdays/Fridays/Saturdays/Sundays 1:00-5:00 starting November 8 through the end of 2025.
Also, appointments can be scheduled via hairandnailsart@gmail.com.

Image: MAGGIE THOMPSON, photograph from the She Trains series (2025), Image courtesy of the artist.