Feminist art with Native themes

An art exhibit called Wording the Image/Imaging the Word features Lynne Allen and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, whose Native blood informs their work. Here's a description of Allen's work:

Pictures write stories of feminism and Native American exploitation

By Michael J. FressolaAllen establishes one of the overriding themes, at the entrance to the gallery with “Invasion,” a grometted hanging made of out of thick quilted pads that moving men use to protect furniture.

A flotilla of small beaded warships (stenciled onto the surface, it turns out), float across the fabric, which is sprinkled with talismans—fishing weights, oxidized bottle caps—and printed with text in English and a Native language.

The text is personal, political, historical, an eyewitness account: “The advance was like the seasons. It came on so gradually that we were not aware of it until it was upon us.”

The piece suggests how the colonization might have entered the Native record in a commemorative artifact.

Two print methods, digital and woodcut, are used in the smaller (17x17 inch) piece “Wind Woman (Ita ta Win).” It’s a dim portrait of Allen’s great grandmother, underscored with faint handwriting and overlaid with bright red markings, like lesions, scattershot or pox.Comment:  For more on modern Native art, see Photos Challenge Native Stereotypes and Washington Post Reviews Vantage Point.

Below:  "Wind Woman" by Lynne Allen is featured at the CSI Gallery show.