this was a densely wooded hill

About the Project

Where: In the lobby of the Henry Art Gallery
When: October 1, 2022 — April 14, 2023
Opening Event: Free to the public at the Henry Art Gallery, Friday, September 30, 2022, 7:00 PM — 9:00 PM
Connect: henryart.org/exhibitions/this-was-a-densely-wooded-hill

this installation is an attempt to make material an immense and accumulatory grief, both collective and personal. by gathering and weaving together disparate, precious materials, some new, some collected over decades of our lives, we ask:

what is the shape of mourning? what is the sound of a memory? how do we honor the sharp, tingling sensation of yearning that fills the cavity of our soft bodies when we think of how things could have been?

—Satpreet Kahlon, representing YƏHAẂ INDIGENOUS CREATIVES COLLECTIVE in collaboration with Asia Tail and Kimberly Deriana

In 2021, yəhaw̓ received funding to purchase a site in Seattle for transformative land-based arts programming. The organization’s continuing search for land during the planning of this was a densely wooded hill forms the basis of the installation. The ongoing displacement of Native and Indigenous peoples from their ancestral territories and the institutional preservation of this displacement in museums are its broader context. 

As you enter the gallery, an overhead, arcing form welcomes you into the space. This cascading archive of objects, connected to community, will continue to grow through the duration of the exhibition. A ground plane depression references the spatial boundaries of a traditional earth lodge, concave formations created by decomposed village sites. Mounds and earthen structures in many forms offer historical context about the ways multiple tribal communities across Turtle Island have nurtured and cared for the land, and have also been displaced.

In a small gesture of reversal, the pieces of the installation that originated from living things and that can be repurposed, including the oyster shell floor and tree stump seating, will be returned to yəhaw̓ to be brought back into living entanglements on the land parcel—offered to the ground or used for community activities. 

We invite people to leave a small object with front desk staff—a single earring that has lost its pair, or other hand-held items—representations of grief, mourning, hope, and honoring that will be integrated into the installation.

About the Artists

Satpreet Kahlon is a Panjabi-born artist, curator, and educator based in Seattle, WA. Through her work, which has been featured in Hyperallergic and Artforum, she is interested in creating visual language that expresses and explores marginalized cultural experiences as well as the manufactured systems of inequity that dictate their boundaries. Her practice has been supported by the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Critical Minded, Vermont Studio Center, the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, 4Culture, Pratt Fine Arts Center, the Magnum Foundation, Brown University, and others. Satpreet is a 2022 Neddy finalist in Painting won the 2022 Bellevue Arts Museum Biennial Curatorial Excellence Award, where she will have a solo show in 2023. 

Asia Tail is an artist and community organizer based in Tukwila, Washington. She attended the Cooper Union School of Art in New York and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 2014. In 2018, she co-founded yəhaw̓ Indigenous Creatives Collective, engaging with hundreds of interdisciplinary artists across the Pacific Northwest. Asia now works as an advocate and arts consultant with several local organizations to channel resources into Indigenous communities. She is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, born and raised on Coast Salish territories.

Kimberly Corinne Deriana is a Mandan and Hidatsa architectural designer and artist who specializes in sustainable, environmental, Indigenous sculpture, architecture, housing, and planning. Her methodologies focus on incorporating Indigenous lifestyle practices in relationship to designing for seven generations. Deriana strives to achieve exceptional design by weaving together respect for interconnections, honor for cultural identity, and appreciation for contemporary quality, manifested in earth-rooted forms, buildings and communities. Deriana created the Brings the Medicine Sundial at King Street Station in 2019, and joined the yəhaw̓ board of directors in 2021.

With Contributions From

Moe'Neyah Holland
Michael Anderson
Ezekiel Chavira
Seven Chavira
Raven Juarez
Catherine Cross Uehara
Joanne Foster
Kirk Rea
Carole Hsiao

With bird sounds collected by 'turam purty in conversation with Iisaaksiichaa Ross Braine & Shareena Purty.

this was a densely wooded hill is organized by Mita Mahato and Ian Siporin.
Concept and design led by Satpreet Kahlon, in collaboration with Asia Tail and Kimberly Deriana.