Flat vessels made by the hands of our grandmothers that we discern and decipher as potential messages of repair, 2019
Five sewing bags attributed to Kodiak Alutiit with unknown makers and no record of when they were acquired live in mustard yellow cabinets, heavy drawers painted grey, the Alaska Commercial Collection, Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology’s storage. I wonder if these objects are instructions left to us by our ancestors. Is it our responsibility to undertake a process of deciphering their meaning? They are speaking to us but in different ways. How do we sound them? How do we listen? How do we move them? How are we moved? To decipher or discern a stitch. Repair for a garment. Repair of a mind.
A commission for SFMOMA in cooperation with the Phoebe A. Hearst Museum of Anthropology, 2019. Documentation by Glenn Cheriton, Joanna Arnold, Ian Reeves, Don Ross, and Katherine Du Tiel.