Raised within the Alaska neighborhood of Nome, which sits on the coast of the Bering Sea, Sonya Kelliher-Combs traces her household lineage to the northernmost reaches in Utqiaġvik and the central inland metropolis of Nulato. Now based mostly in Anchorage, her Iñupiaq and Athabascan ancestry, cultural heritage, and relationship to the land represent the nucleus round which her multidisciplinary work revolves.
Rising up in a rural neighborhood, Kelliher-Combs noticed and realized “time-honored traditional women’s and collective labor—skin sewing, beading, and food preparation—that taught her to appreciate the intimacy of intergenerational knowledge and material histories,” says an artist assertion within the foreword of the artist’s new monograph, Mark.
Revealed by Hirmer Verlag, the amount explores the breadth of Kelliher-Combs’s follow, from work, sculptures, and installations to her curatorial and neighborhood advocacy work.
Drawing on the supplies and symbolism of ancestral, Indigenous information, Kelliher-Combs addresses what she describes as “the ongoing struggle for self-definition and identity in the Alaskan context,” delving into historical past, tradition, household, and long-held customs.
The works “also speak of abuse, marginalization, and the historical and contemporary struggles of Indigenous peoples in the North and worldwide,” her assertion continues. In “Goodbye,” for instance, 52 gloves and mittens are gathered collectively as if waving a collective farewell.
The poignant set up aimed to open the dialogue in regards to the delicate topic of suicide, the speed of which on the time Kelliher-Combs made the piece was almost 52 Native Alaskans per 100,000—greater than triple the age-adjusted price amongst People typically. The mitts have been all handmade and lent by area people members.
By means of delicate, tactile sculptures and atmospheric work, the artist venerates historical ancestral practices, like animal conceal preparation, whereas exploring the best way modern supplies like plastic and fossil fuels are reworking the panorama. She usually incorporates maps, thread, beads, hair, and material.
Kelliher-Combs additionally combines natural and artificial supplies, merging the standard with the brand new; the native with the imported. She describes how she pushes “beyond the binary divisions of Western and Indigenous cultures, self and other, and man and nature, to examine the interrelationships and interdependence of these concepts.”
See extra of the artist’s work on her web site, and discover your copy of Mark on Bookshop.
