Gregg Deal is a husband, father, artist and a member of the Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe. As a provocative contemporary artist-activist much of Deal’s work deals with Indigenous identity and pop culture, touching on issues of race relations, historical consideration and stereotype. With this work—including paintings, mural work, performance art, filmmaking and spoken word—Deal critically examines issues within Indian country such as decolonization, the Native mascot issue and appropriation.
Deal was recently showcased on PBS Arts District and has been Native Arts Artist-in-Residence at the Denver Art Museum in 2015-2016 and Artist In Residence at UC Berkeley for the 2017-2018 school year. His art has been exhibited nationally since 2002. Deal has lectured widely at prominent educational institutions and museums, including: Denver Art Museum, Denver, C.O.; Dartmouth College, Hanover, N.H.; Columbia University, New York City, N.Y., University of Maryland, College Park, MD; Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA; Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C.; Creative Mornings DC and Denver; University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO; and Colorado College, Colorado Springs, CO. His television appearances have included PBS, “The Daily Show” and W. Kamau Bell’s “Totally Biased” as well as appearances on Aljazeera, ESPN, and ABC News.