from the swamps, with love
Dana Hunt-Locklear
artist, game designer, and researcher
about the artist
*Games
*research
*Indigenometry: these are the things that make me native (2025)
*In my dreams (2025)
from the swamps, with love
I'm Dana! An Indigenous video game designer, artist, and games researcher. Lover of all things whimsical, weird, and cute. My research revolves around affect, video games, play, storytelling, and representation — specifically North American Indigenous peoples from the Southeastern US. A member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, I'm dedicated to illustrating stories revolving around Indigenous identity and the Digital Indian; a contemporary amalgamation of Indigeneity in the age of meta.I was the recipient of an Andrew W. Mellon research fellowship at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke (21-22), presenting a digital exhibition of art created in conencetraion camps during World War II in Theresienstadt (now the Czech Republic) titled Surviving Silence: Voices of Terezin. I was also the gracious recipient of a Mozilla Foundation Impossible Project grant for an indie RPG puzzle game, EYE-RIS, created with a team of fellow students at SUNY UB from 2024-25.I'm currently an MFA student finishing my third year @ SUNY University at Buffalo's Department of Media Study!
'eye-ris' (2024)
Sci-fi puzzle rpg video game funded through the Mozilla Foundation.
Wake up in a space station without a body, commandeer an EYEBOT as you try to escape — EYE-RIS knows all.Programming Famous Clark
Art Dana Hunt-Locklear
Music CJ Bryant
Writing Juno Hunter
'soul guide' (2023)
a point and travel game, play as a soul experiencing emotions, and unravel a story along the way.Programming Max Wilde
Art Dana Hunt-Locklear
Music Mushroom City by Steven Bull
'partner star' (2023)
play here.
Play as the main character, plagued by a butterfly, a poem, and ever-constant calling from someone beyond. They know who you are, do you know them?A point and click story.
Programming, art, writing by Dana Hunt-Locklear
'in my dreams' (2025)
'in my dreams' is a recreation of my childhood — teenage bedroom, exploring nostalgia, femininity, and Indigeneity in contemporary media. Featuring Indigenous characters like Booker Dewitt (Bioshock: Infinite), Delsin Rowe (InFamous: Second Son), Ratonhnhaké:ton/Connor Kenway (Assassin's Creed III), and Nathan Explosion (Metalocalypse), I sought to explore the ties between these mediated versions of Indigeneity and my own as a Lumbee (Southeastern American Indigenous person). Likewise, the juxtaposition of soft pinks and warm hues paired with 'masculine' materialities seeks to explain the enmeshment of gender stereotypes and real-world Indigenous girls. In 'in my dreams' the house is approached as not only an affective vehicle, but also as a gamified state. As such, there are multiple items scattered about the installation for viewer exploration.On the Disney princess CRT are films created by myself that reflect my growth as a person, especially as it relates to my relationship between land, identity, and embodiment. Text is added to create an affective, gamified landscape in which memories that are personal to me, can also be presented and received as personal by others, as well.
films featured in 'in my dreams':
'we'll see you when you come home' (2024)
'homemovie#2'
(2025)
You can find a list of my conference presentations below:“Playing with Affect: How Video Games Make Us Feel," Worldmaking at the World’s End: A Graduate Conference on Research Based Creative Practice, Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art, NY, February 9, 2025.“Desperate Infrastructures: Elemental Life Cycles and Body as Infrastructure in OFF (2008),” Meaningful Play 2024, Carnegie Mellon University, PA, October 17, 2024.“Japanese Horror Games and Rust Belt America: Rust Palaces and Environmental Storytelling in Japanese Horror Series Silent Hill,” Replaying Japan 2024, SUNY University at Buffalo, NY, August 20, 2024.My 2024 paper, "Desperate Infrastructures" was published in the 2024 Meaningful Play Conference Proceedings, which can be found online right over here -->
read the press release on the CEPA Gallery website for 'sustained echoes'.read about the 'Worldmaking at the World's End' conference here, on the Buffalo Institute for Contemporary Art's website.
'Indigenometry’ seeks to explore material measurements of Indigeneity through the lens of the 1936 Carl Seltzer reports, a series of anthropometric tests on the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina, a North American Indigenous peoples.
Approaching the prospect of aestheticizing eugenic tests, though arduous, can benefit the larger public in terms of understanding not only the potential for material simplicity of racism but its enmeshment in our surrounding environments, as well.
Items like a brown paper bag denote an air of anti-black sentiments, a yellow #2 pencil marks the line between being ‘too colored’ and just enough. Knotted hair symbolizes a tension between biological makeup and phenotypical happenstance. An eagle feather and Indian card, both symbols that dichotomize the struggle between freedom and systemic control.“But what lies inside the bag? Is the eagle feather real? Do you guys really have to carry around the card? How do you know you’re a real Indian?”These are questions surrounding the installation that is ‘Indigenometry’, as materials are presented for viewer interpretation. If I know the things that make me an Indian, will other people recognize my Indigeneity as authentic through interaction with the same materials that construct my identity, socially?