Lifting the Sky: An Indigenous Fashion Show
photos by Jen Au / courtesy of Seattle Art Museum
About the Project
When: May 2, 2019
Where: Seattle Art Museum, Brotman Forum, 1300 1st Ave, Seattle, WA 98101
Connect: seattleartmuseum.org
In partnership with the Seattle Art Museum, yəhaw̓ presented Lifting the Sky: An Indigenous Fashion Show. Curator Lisa Fruichantie (Seminole / Mvskoke-Creek) brought together Native designers, artists, and performers from across the Pacific Northwest for a night of Indigenous fashion. Audiences watched contemporary styles walk the runway to the beat of a powwow drum, learned about intertribal regalia created by local community members, and shopped at an all-Native market. Visitors continued exploring urban Indigenous perspectives upstairs in the SAM galleries with half-off admission to Jeffrey Gibson: Like a Hammer.
Designers
Meka Clothing / Mary Kelsay (Unangax / Unangan)
Trickster Company / Crystal Worl (Tlingit / Athabascan)
Evan Ducharme (Metis / Cree / Ojibwe / Saulteaux)
Abriel Johnny Rodriguez (Cowichan / Tlingit)
Pop-Up Exhibitors
Abigail Echo-Hawk & the Urban Indian Health Institute (Pawnee)
Sam Stitt (Choctaw)
Kathryn Miller (Spokane)
Sonrisa Barron (Choctaw)
Curator
Lisa Fruichantie (Seminole)
Hair / Makeup
Matthew Lawrence (Makah)
Amanda Upham (Blackfeet)
Katie Kihara
Hosts
Roquin-Jon Quichocho Siongco (CHamoru)
Roldy Aguero Ablao (CHamoru)
Vendors
Paige Pettibon (Salish)
Ashley Alvarez (Aleut / Unangax)
Michaila Taylor (Yup'ik)
Denise Emerson (Skokomish / Diné)
Ayanna Fuentes (Apache / Mayan / Tiano)
Music
DJ Drew Hobson (Indigenous)
Drum Group Stronghold (Puyallup)
About the Curator
Lisa Fruichantie’s art merges traditional Seminole / Creek Patchwork design with aspects of her heritage, and cultures surrounding and shaping her as she was growing up. Lisa was raised in Alaska which she enjoyed but was far away from her own culture and family. As a result, her family became those chosen by her, and social activism, fringe music scenes, and underground art movements became her social outlet. As an adult she had the privilege to embrace her own culture and find balance between the influences that shaped her and the roots of her heritage. Reuniting with her family, her own tribe - especially through art, dance, music and language - healed her sense of belonging. Lisa’s art work now finds that balance in nodding to tradition, cultivating the new and being content with the current. She designs through blends of new fabric, patterns, textiles and hemlines, all the while keeping the precision and the delicate intricacies of patchwork tradition in the forefront.