Bard Graduate Center presents a triptych of pieces by Meghann O’Brien (Jaad Kuujus), a contemporary Indigenous weaver from British Columbia of Haida and Kwakwaka’wakw descent, working in collaboration with a team of anthropologists, technologists, and artists. This installation—including Sky Blanket, a robe created by O’Brien with contributions from First Nations artists Jay Simeon and Andy Everson; Wrapped in the Cloud, a digital animation critically engaging the photogrammetry and 3D-modelling process documenting Sky Blanket; and an untitled robe digitally woven on a TC2 loom materializing an instance of Sky Blanket’s digital modeling process—collectively illustrate the complex art of translation across media and material, kinship and teaching, the past and the future. Join us starting at 4 pm for a special viewing of the works and stay for a conversation at 6 pm with O’Brien along with Everson, museum anthropologists Kate Hennessy and Hannah Turner, and design researcher Doenja Oogjes. Moderated by curator Laura Allen.
An Indigenous Arts in Transition lecture.
Meghann O’Brien (b. 1982) is a Northwest Coast weaver from the community of Alert Bay, British Columbia. Her innovative approach to the traditional art forms of basketry and Yeil Koowu (Raven’s Tail) and Naaxiin (Chilkat) textiles connects to the rhythms and patterns of the natural world and creates a continuity between herself and her ancestors. O’Brien, who left the field of professional snowboarding to work full time as a weaver in 2010, employs materials such as hand-spun mountain goat wool and cedar bark in her meticulous weavings and baskets. She has apprenticed with master weavers Kerri Dick, Sherri Dick, and William White. O’Brien now lives in Vancouver and is currently exploring the intersection of Indigenous materials and techniques with the world of fashion and 3D printing. She travels globally to lecture and demonstrate, emphasizing the value of contributing to the contemporary ceremonial practices of the Haida and Kwakwakw’wakw people. Andy Everson is a contemporary Indigenous artist born in Comox, British Columbia. His artworks are greatly influenced by his Comox and Kwakwaka’wakw ancestries. Everson completed bachelor’s and master’s degrees in anthropology at the University of British Columbia. Doenja Oogjes is a design researcher in the field of human-computer interaction. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Industrial Design at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. She is interested in the indirect, accidental, surprising, and overlooked ways that designed things mediate the everyday. She is part of the Crafting Wearable Senses lab, where she works with a TC2 jacquard loom to understand the participation of the more-than-human world in digital craftsmanship. Kate Hennessy is an associate professor specializing in media at Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology, Canada. As an anthropologist of media and the director of the Making Culture Lab, an interdisciplinary research-creation and production studio, she uses collaborative, feminist, and decolonial methodologies to explore the impacts of new memory infrastructures and cultural practices of media, museums, and archives. She values working across disciplinary boundaries in her practice as an artist, curator, and scholar, with a particular interest in research-creation, including expression in video, photography, 3D modeling, and virtual exhibition. She was a founding member of the Ethnographic Terminalia Collective and continues to situate her work between art, anthropology, and curation. Hannah Turner is an assistant professor and settler of German/Norwegian descent at the School of Information at the University of British Columbia. As a critical information studies scholar working at the intersection of material culture and technology, her work examines the colonial legacies of data and documentation practices in museums. Her research is part historical and part collaborative, and has involved work with museum institutions, artists, and communities, particularly around themes of classification, documentation, and repair. Laura J. Allen (MA ‘20) is an interdisciplinary scholar and the Curator of Native American Art at the Montclair Art Museum. Her museum practice focuses on critical and collaborative museology and historical, modern, and contemporary Native art. In 2020, Allen received her M.A. in Decorative Arts, Design History, and Material Culture from Bard Graduate Center. Her research and publications examine visual and material culture of the Northwest Coast as well as Indigenous and intercultural dress, fashion, and textile history in the Americas. Themes in her work include Indigenous agency and resurgence; colonialism; materiality and material analysis; and the collection, circulation, and display of cultural objects and designs.
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