Henry Payer is a Ho-Chunk artist who works primarily with collage and mixed media. Born in Sioux City, IA, in 1986, Payer received a BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM, in 2008. He was invited to study at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and obtained an MFA in 2013. Henry has exhibited his work at the Great Plains Art Museum in Lincoln, NE; All My Relations Gallery in Minneapolis, MN; Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO; and Overture Galleries in Madison, WI. Payer’s work has also been exhibited at the University of Venice Ca’ Voscari, Palazzo Cosulich in Venice, Italy. Payer has worked as an instructor at the Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. He currently lives in Sioux City, IA.

Payer’s narrative compositions are bold and contemporary. His works utilize Indigenous cartographic methods with traditional aspects of spatial representation and symbolism while appropriating European modernist models of cubism, spatial distortion, and collage. Each work offers a visual narrative of symbols and appropriated voices from American consumer society that reconfigures history and references a portrait's altered landscape or identity. Payer questions our presumptions and challenges the dialogue of what is to be expected of Indigenous artists. Henry represents the work of artists seeking to expand the range and voice of their visual expression and cultural representation while attending to concepts and forms of tradition.