Empowering Art review – Indigenous masterworks full of wonder and sorrow

‘Art that reveals a fiercely, joyously living culture’ … a Nuxalk mask on display at Empowering Art. Photograph: © Pitt Rivers Museum

When the artist Simeon Stilthda saw a picture of Egypt’s Great Sphinx in a missionary bible in the 1870s, he carved his own version of it. Stilthda was a member of the Haida people in the Pacific Northwest of the Americas and his carving was a tribute from the indigenous culture of this region to ancient Egypt, thousands of miles and years away. It’s not just a wonderful sculpture – round the back, the Sphinx has a Haida hairstyle – but a piece of art theory in wood. Stilthda draws eye-opening parallels between his community’s religious art and that of the Pharaohs.

A Caribou antler comb. Photograph: Sainsbury Centre