NYC Exhibition: Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother
In April our team traveled to New York to install two short-term exhibitions of Jaad Kuujus Meghann O’Brien’s woven and digital artwork, first at Bard Graduate Center in Manhattan and then at the Textile Arts Center in Brooklyn. This was the first time that Meghann’s incredible Chilkat and Ravenstail-style woven robe Sky Blanket was exhibited alongside our collaborative media work Wrapped in the Cloud, and a new (Untitled) robe that was woven with our team on a TC2 digital jacquard loom. Our team gave a series of talks over the week: Meghann and Andy Everson discussed the design and mountain goat wool materiality of Sky Blanket; our whole team had a panel discussion with Montclair Art Museum curator Laura Allen, and then Doenja Oogjes did a talk about her research-through-design and digital weaving practice. We then relocated the exhibition for a week-long run in the Textile Arts Center Gallery.
From Bard Graduate Center’s Website:
“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.
Photographs by Kate Hennessy.
Thank you to all who made it possible to share this work: Aaron Glass, Andrew Kircher, and the team at Bard Graduate Center; Laura Allen, and Kira Silver at Textile Arts Center.