Saif Azzuz: weych-pues / tàkhòne (where the rivers meet)

Saif Azzuz’s weych-pues / tàkhòne (where the rivers meet) (2026) takes the form of a giant sturgeon made of steel, aluminum, and salvaged car parts from the Hudson Valley, together with natural materials from the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2024, while working as an artist in residence at Storm King, Azzuz (Yurok, Karuk, Libyan, b. 1987) noticed that local signs designating the Hudson River Estuary are illustrated with a sturgeon, a fish familiar to him from the Klamath River, which runs through the Yurok Reservation in California. An enrolled member of the Yurok Tribe, Azzuz draws upon his community’s deep connection with nature to create works that reflect the interdependence of all things. “Sturgeons are species that are millions of years old,” the artist has said. “They hold so much of our stories and the stories of the land.” The sturgeon is an important source of food and cultural tradition for many Native Americans. Despite being widely endangered around the globe—due to overfishing, pollution, and other threats to its habitat—the sturgeon endures. For Azzuz, the sturgeon symbolizes Indigenous survivance, a concept articulated by Anishinaabe writer Gerald Vizenor that considers Native survival as an active, ongoing mode of resistance.

Etched into the skin of Azzuz’s sturgeon are drawings of native plants, Yurok motifs, and text, on which the artist collaborated with his family and Storm King staff. Within the work, small sculpted forms made from reclaimed hardwood lie just beyond the viewer’s reach, as do strings of beads, steel, and abalone shells, which move with passing winds. The artwork’s title, written in Yurok and Lenape, connects the ancestral home of the Yurok in Humboldt County, California, with Lenapehoking, the home of the Lenape, the original, forcibly displaced, people of the Hudson Valley. Azzuz imbues his sculpture with shared stories of the land, its peoples, and the sturgeon, underscoring how nature’s well-being is intimately connected with our own.

Storm King’s Outlooks series offers emerging and mid-career artists the opportunity to present a large-scale project in the landscape. Azzuz held a residency at Storm King through the Shandaken: Storm King residency program.