Kathleen Ash-Milby is the curator of Native American art at the Portland Art Museum and cocurator, with Abigail Winograd, of the U.S. pavilion for the 60th edition of the Venice Biennale. Below, she discusses the significance of broader histories and representation, along with related interests.
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Tuscarora beaded whimsies
Image Credit: Courtesy National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C. In northern New York state, Tuscarora bead workers created opulent, very heavily beaded objects called whimsies that they sold to tourists visiting Niagara Falls in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Native artist Jeffrey Gibson drew inspiration from the Tuscarora beaded whimsies in his paintings in the early aughts while working at the Field Museum. But there was very little written about these souvenirs because they were seen as having been produced for the market rather than the culture. It’s clear that they aesthetically influenced Gibson’s canvases, with surfaces of pigmented silicone that are beaded onto the canvas much like the stacked beadwork of the whimsies. Whimsies have a similar three- dimensional quality, both rising on the surface and stringing down over the edge. It’s difficult to be so indulgent in color, pattern, and material, but they do a beautiful job of it.
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Westknits
Image Credit: Courtesy Westknits I’ve been knitting since I was in high school as a form of stress release. All my projects are simple, but it indulges my desire to handle color. When I was in Amsterdam, I stumbled into the yarn shop Stephen & Penelope, which was stocked with many unconventional yarns that I hadn’t seen before. It made me feel inspired to try a new, more challenging pattern. Later, I realized one of the designers behind the store, Stephen West, has all these video tutorials under the name Westknits on how to re-create some of his designs. West is an American expat in Amsterdam who is playing with color in knitting in a different kind of way. I’m totally hooked!
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Carla Rossi
Image Credit: Photo Sam Gehrke Carla Rossi is a drag clown performer also known as artist Anthony Hudson. He’s a member of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde. I first encountered Rossi’s often autobiographical performances that address issues around the perception of Native culture through comedy when I moved to Portland. Last year, Rossi activated Jeffrey Gibson’s site-specific installation They Come from Fire at the Portland Art Museum with a performance that responded to a timeline of notable local dates and historical events that Gibson had highlighted in his work. Rossi also included biographical information, such as having an ancestor who was a colonizer. This is not uncommon for people in the Native community, and it’s refreshing that Rossi can bring these experiences to light through humor.
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Frybread Face and Me (2023)
Image Credit: ©ARRAY Releasing/Courtesy Everett The film Frybread Face and Me (2023) is about a kid from San Diego whose parents send him to stay for the summer with his Navajo family on the reservation. There, he spends a lot of time with his cousin, nicknamed Frybread Face, who’s a few years older. She calls him Shamu because of a personal fascination with SeaWorld and all the things he has seen [outside the reservation]. It’s a classic fish-out- of-water story. I really identified with Shamu because I also didn’t grow up on a reservation, and when I visited family, I wasn’t allowed to do the same work as my younger cousin. That experience resonated with me, feeling like an outsider among family.
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River Kings (2021)
Image Credit: Courtesy DelMonico Books/Big NDN Press Reading is my go-to before bed, and I really enjoy nonfiction. Cat Jarman’s book River Kings (2021) uses scientific techniques that weren’t available even 20 years ago to uncover new details about the presence of Vikings in the United Kingdom. In the past, the way that we looked at world history has been narrowed and restricted. Speaking from my own experience, American history has excluded and erased a lot of our Native history. It feels as if people are finally interested in learning about what was left out. We’re discovering that there are a lot more complex trade relationships and connections between cultures that I find to be most interesting.