Portland-based Indigenous trans artist, Nonamey, brings his illustrative style to the Hermès Maison Madison window. The horse atelier workshop installation celebrates Hermès’ rich craftsmanship history.
Amidst the menagerie of window shop mannequins in the luxury shops of New York City’s Madison Ave is Hermès’ whimsical equestrian atelier workshop.
The artist behind the window installation is Nonamey, a Portland-based Indigenous trans artist. In his highly illustrative style, the cardboard workshop scene tells the story of a blue horse fit with a new, immaculate saddle.
Hermès is notorious for its collaborative relationship with the art world. Their Artist Window initiative gives artists the freedom and space to express their brilliance while commemorating the brand’s spirit.
Nonamey’s workshop window celebrates Hermès’ rich handicraft history. Thierry Hermès established the brand as a leather saddle business in 1837. Their reputation for fine craftsmanship expanded into luxury accessories and apparel lines in the 20th century.
The opportunity to collaborate with Hermès is significant for Nonamey, who has a long-lived connection to the company. He recalls a Hermès scarf his grandmother gifted him at age 10 that shaped his love for beautiful things and craftsmanship.
“The world around me often seeks to erase these parts of myself. However, I’m daily disrupting that erasure in my interactions with others and finding new meaning in my intersecting identities.”
Holding it to the window, Nonamey watched the light cast through the scarf’s floral green and purple pattern. ” I see now how that moment perhaps shaped my relationship with objects and meaning,” Nonamey said. “How something thoughtfully created could transcend its function and become a source of connection to beauty.”
Nonamey’s window installation represents his own artistic narrative, along with Hermès‘s narrative. Nonamey is known for his multidisciplinary pieces utilizing found and recycled materials, like cardboard and discarded roadside relics. His pieces are rooted in the transformation of ordinary objects into something extraordinary.
Motels with shattered neon, vacant houses, and roadside objects inspire Nonamey. “They all tell a story,” he said. “Humans leave their mark on everything; these are the things that keep me curious.”
When viewed through the lens of their identity, Nonamey’s exploration of reclaimed objects carries a deeper meaning. As a trans, Indigenous, and neurodivergent individual, Nonamey’s work reflects their daily experiences of erasure and marginalization.
“The world around me often seeks to erase these parts of myself. However, I’m daily disrupting that erasure in my interactions with others and finding new meaning in my intersecting identities,” said Nonamey.
Nonamey classifies his redemptive method–both of the self and of the object– as an act of resistance. “It’s a way of asserting that nothing, and no one, is disposable,” he said. “The act of reclamation is not just artistic; it’s essential to the human experience.”
His work is a reminder that beauty is found in the new and immaculate but also in the discarded and forgotten. What began as ordinary cardboard now manifests as a playful workshop scene. Once the discarded object becomes art, it finds new meaning.
“I am here, present, and ready for whatever comes next.”
Regarding artistic evolution, “each day brings its own surprises” for Nonamey. His window installation for Hermès sparked a desire to examine legacy, history, and craftsmanship themes.
Although some may say his work doesn’t resemble traditional ‘Indigenous art,’ he asserted that it is Indigenous art. “I am Ojibwe. We work with our hands. It comes from Native hands; therefore, it is Native art,” he said. “I am here, present, and ready for whatever comes next.”
Brought to life by Nonamey’s distinctive perspective, the Hermès window installation offers a rare glimpse into the intersection of art, luxury, and personal narrative. The equestrian workshop atelier is an ode to the beauty and craft at the heart of Hermès.
Image by Skot Yobauje courtesy of Hermès. The installation will be up unitl May.
