Exhibition Curation
photo by Shann Thomas
About the Project
The yəhaw̓ curatorial team worked with partner sites to promote and program Indigenous artists into solo and group exhibitions around Western Washington.
Venues
950 Gallery
The Alice Gallery
Suquamish Museum
Seattle Art Museum Community Gallery
Seattle University's Hedreen Gallery
Alma Mater Tacoma
Feast Arts Center
Chief Seattle Club
Bellevue College Gallery
Nepantla Cultural Arts Gallery
Vermillion Gallery
The Vera Project
King Street Station
Catherine Cross Uehara at 950 Gallery
Where: 950 Gallery, Suite 205, 950 Pacific Ave, Tacoma, WA 98402
When: May 9 - June 20, 2019
Connect: catherinecrossuehara.com / spaceworkstacoma.com/gallery
Dinosauryland
In one hand, none of the work here is new, and on the other it is all new work. Initially my impulse was to try and show something about how I see photographically, but I do that on Instagram and why not try something new with some old friends? From one vantage point my work is painting or painting adjacent, also abstract and narrative... also sculptural. Also ‘in reaction to’ best art handling practices (see @preptantrumshow for one of my ‘passion projects’). Please enjoy some new arrangements of old objects I’ve been playing around with. Also, some of these paintings have never been shown and I think some of them are pretty awesome. Follow me on Instagram for more context @ccuehara and @preptantrumshow. It’s a fun fraught journey and it’s just starting to get interesting.
- CCU
About the Artist
Catherine was born June 8, 1971 in Berkeley California at 11:11am. She attended Malcolm X Elementary School, Berkeley High, UCDavis, and received her MFA in painting from Hunter College in 2000. She has at least twenty years of experience Art Handling, Packing, and with Logistics, and she has personally painted the walls of at least five Puget Sound area museums.
photos by Mel Carter
Lehuauakea Fernandez at the Alice Gallery
Where: The Alice Gallery, 6007 12th Ave S, Seattle, WA 98108
When: April 6 - 27, 2019
Connect: lehuauakea.com / thealicegallery.com
A Gift, A Breath
“He wahī paʻakai — Just a package of salt”
The works in A Gift, A Breath address the idea of reciprocity, or a conscious relationship built upon a mutual give and take.
Using traditional ʻohe kāpala craft, simple found object sculpture, and paintings on paper, Lehuauakea explores various acts of reciprocity from a mixed-Native Hawaiian perspective. Examining the ties between oneself and their community, a culture and its surrounding environment, or even the present and the past, these mixed media works seek to highlight the role of customary offering practices, or hoʻokupu, within a contemporary context.
What are the conditions, verbal or nonverbal, temporal or atemporal, that must be met in order for these gifts to be rightfully given, acknowledged, and received?
What, then, ultimately carries greater weight — the object of the gift, or the act of giving in itself?
About the Artist
Lehuauakea Fernandez is a mixed Native Hawaiian interdisciplinary artist from Hilo, Hawaiʻi. They have participated in several solo and group shows throughout the Pacific Northwest, most recently yəhaw̓ at King Street Station in Seattle, and the 23rd Annual Recent Graduates Exhibition at Blackfish Gallery in Portland. Through a range of craft-based media, sculpture, and installation, their art serves as a means of exploring cultural and biological ecologies, mixed-Indigenous identity, and what it means to live within the context of contemporary environmental degradation.
Lehua currently lives and works in Portland, Oregon after recently earning their Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting, with a minor in Art + Ecology at Pacific Northwest College of Art.
Randi Purser and Erik Sanchez at Suquamish Museum
Where: Suquamish Museum, 6861 NE South St, Suquamish, WA 98392
When: April 20 - July 6, 2019
Connect: suquamishmuseum.org / sanchez-creative.com
yəhaw̓ artists Erik Sanchez (Shoalwater Bay / Chinook / Mexican-American) and Randi Purser (Suquamish) exhibit their work at Suquamish Museum. Sanchez creates narrative photography, documenting contemporary society and the landscape around him. Purser is a Suquamish tribal Elder and Coast Salish traditional carver, known for her work on beautiful house posts, canoes, masks and other carvings.
This exhibition was accompanied by a series of printmaking and drawing workshops led by yəhaw̓ artists at the museum throughout the spring.
yəhaw̓ at SAM Community Gallery
Where: Seattle Art Museum, 1300 1st Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98101
When: February 28 - March 24, 2019
Connect: seattleartmuseum.org / whitecanyondesign.com/work / foxanthonyspears.com
yəhaw̓ artists Cindy Chiscilly (Navajo / Diné) and Fox Spears (Karuk) show their work together at Seattle Art Museum's Community Gallery.
Elizabeth LaPensée at Hedreen Gallery
Where: Hedreen Gallery, 901 12th Avenue, Seattle, WA, 98104
When: December 1, 2018 - March 3, 2019
Connect: seattleu.edu/artsci/arts/calendar-of-events/elizabeth-lapensee/
Heart of the Game
This winter, Hedreen Gallery hosts an interactive gaming hub in which artist Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe, Métis, settler-Irish) rewires the architecture of contemporary gaming imaginations in ways that center, iterate and mainstream Indigenous ways of knowing. Join us during our regular gallery hours (Wed-Sat 1-6pm) or for one of our special exhibition programs:
heart of the game highlights the work of Elizabeth LaPensée, a prolific artist, writer, designer and scholar who foregrounds Indigenous self-determination and Indigenous sovereignty through game design, game development and game play. Featuring a variety of games in both digital and non-digital platforms, this exhibition celebrates LaPensée's many innovative roles and interventions in game design, including: producing and designing original game architecture, writing backdrops for game-play, organizing teams of Indigenous writers for collaborative game development, producing original artwork and more. In addition to learning about the design and context of a wide range of LaPensée’s games, gallery visitors will have the opportunity to play the side-scroller game Thunderbird Strike, i-pad Singing game Honour Water, table-top role-playing game Dialect and several test levels from When Rivers Were Trails, an Indigenous take on Oregon Trail, which will be released in early 2019.
About the Artist
Elizabeth LaPensée, Ph.D., is an award-winning designer, writer, artist, and researcher who creates and studies Indigenous-led media such as games and comics. She is Anishinaabe from Baawaating with relations at Bay Mills Indian Community, Métis named for Elizabeth Morris, and settler-Irish. She is an Assistant Professor of Media & Information and Writing, Rhetoric & American Cultures at Michigan State University. She is a 2018 Guggenheim Fellow.
Most recently, she designed and created art for Thunderbird Strike (2017), a lightning-searing side-scroller game which won Best Digital Media at imagineNATIVE Film + Media Arts Festival. She also designed and created art for Honour Water (2016), an Anishinaabe singing game for healing the water. Her work also includes analog games, such as The Gift of Food (2014), a board game about Northwest Native traditional foods.
She is co-editor of the comic collections Deer Woman: An Anthology (2017) and Sovereign Traces Volume 1: Not (Just) (An)Other (2018) and editor of Sovereign Traces Volume 2: Relational Constellation (2019).
image courtesy of the gallery
Priscilla Dobler at Alma Mater
Where: Alma Mater, 1322 Fawcett Ave, Tacoma, WA 98402
When: November 15 - December 20, 2018
Connect: almamatertacoma.com / priscilladoblerart.com
Priscilla Dobler is featured in a solo exhibition at Alma Mater’s gallery in Tacoma. The exhibition opens during third Thursday art walk, November 15th, with a participatory tortilla-making performance led by the artist.
Kanani Miyamoto at Feast Arts Center
Where: Feast Arts Center, 1402 South 11th Street, Tacoma, WA, 98405
When: November 15, 2018 - January 11, 2019
The In-Between
In partnership with yəhaw̓, Feast Arts Center in Tacoma is hosting a solo exhibition by Indigenous artist Kanani Miyamoto. The In-Between is a mysterious place, maybe a place of tension, maybe a place to create new stories. A place between now and the next thing.
About the Artist
Kanani Miyamoto is a passionate printmaker. Her training in printmaking is rooted in tradition, but Miyamoto pushes the standards of printmaking in the form of large scale mixed media original prints, and installation. Miyamoto’s work is created with many different techniques. She combines copper plate etchings with screen prints, and wood block prints to create rich and unique installations.
Read a review of the show by Alec Clayton online here.
photos by Feast Arts Center and Alec Clayton
yəhaw̓ and Native Works at Chief Seattle Club
Where: Chief Seattle Club, 410 2nd Ave Ext S, Seattle, WA 98104
When: November 1, 2018
Connect: chiefseattleclub.org / nativeworkscsc.org
Our Indigenous Future
yəhaw̓ is partnering with Native Works by Chief Seattle Club to host a special exhibition during the November Pioneer Square Art Walk in Seattle.
This event is in conjunction with the renewed participation of Chief Seattle Club in regular monthly Art Walks, and the launch of the Native Work's design contest inviting Indigenous creatives to submit artwork to be featured in future Native Works merchandise.
The theme of this exhibition is “Indigenous Futures". The group exhibition includes works by Mary Kelsay, Denise Emerson, Linley Logan, Ellyn Carlson, Erik Sanchez, Raven Juarez, and others.
photos by Rabbit Hearted Girls Photography
