From blocky forms to textured lines, artist Laura Youngbird uses dresses to address wide-ranging topics.
“I’m obsessed,” Youngbird says about the common theme throughout her “Uncertainty” exhibition on display now at the Rourke Art Gallery + Museum in downtown Moorhead.
It’s an infatuation that she says has been inextinguishable, considering the endless implications of a simple dress as a woman, as a Native American and as a person with a past — both personal and generational.
“Common Thread” by Laura Youngbird is now on display in Moorhead. Courtesy of the Rourke Art Gallery + Museum / Special to The Forum
In her artist statement, Youngbird elaborates by saying “the dress is a simple garment and a powerful artifact,” connecting her grandmother, mother and sisters through a common thread.
Thinking back to the root of her artistic interest in the form, Youngbird had just gone back to school in 1986. She was an older-than-average student and just setting down a path toward sobriety.
Her grandmother had recently passed away from cirrhosis of the liver when her great-aunt Lucy had just delivered a stack of photographs.
“I had all these pictures of my grandmother, you know, a lot of them wearing this little white dress, but her face was scratched out of them," she says.
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For Youngbird, the dress is an artifact, buried deep under the layers of her past. It is a stamp of generalization and conformity, of imposed sexualization and dominance. Her early works used the dress to explore her boarding school experience, but have developed even further since.
But her use of the dress grows beyond unassuming metaphors and becomes a full-blown allegorical take on huge topics. In her signature piece, “Manifestation,” Youngbird tells a story of Native American dislocation and white migration westward.
In her signature work for the exhibition, “Manifestation” by Laura Youngbird is a mixed-media piece that serves as a take on John Gast’s painting “American Progress” (1872), which is an allegorical representation of the modernization of the new West. Courtesy of the Rourke Art Gallery + Museum / Special to The Forum
A collage of images provide a snapshot of impending colonization, with a ghostly figure hovering above.
“This figure is more like, she's got her little purse with smallpox," she says. "She's bringing that and so it was seen a lot differently to the Native people — this so-called progress.”
Youngbird’s adaptation of the famous John Gast painting “American Progress” offers up an alternative reality, or a way to unlearn a deeply ingrained perspective.
“There was so much propaganda about how evil and, ‘they weren't using the land anyway,’ and so a lot of that is still perpetuated in our school systems today," she says.
“Unearthed” is a mixed-media print by Laura Youngbird that references the artist's work in archaeology and anthropology. Courtesy of the Rourke Art Gallery + Museum / Special to The Forum
In a nod to her background in archaeology and anthropology, “Unearthed” is a mixed-media piece from the exhibition created from a silk screen taken of her childhood Communion dress, yet another exploration of the dress as a storytelling medium.
“It’s making a comment about all the murdered and missing Indigenous women and people are getting some awareness now, but that was going on from the very beginning. Native people were considered subhuman and disposable,” Youngbird says.
Contrasting her work in drawing, painting and sculpture, her prints have a sense of liberation that works conversely with the background behind her dress forms.
“My prints seemed to be kind of different from my drawing and painting. They were a lot tighter, because they had to be calculated or something,” Youngbird says.
View the full “Uncertainty” exhibition online at therourke.org/laurayoungbird.html.
Alongside a series of prints, artist Laura Youngbird also included an early painting of her great-great-grandfather Maymaushkawash, titled “Broken Treaties,” with the figure holding a pipe and wearing a peace medal that was given to him by King George. Courtesy of the Rourke Art Gallery + Museum / Special to The Forum
What: “Uncertainty” by Laura Youngbird
Where: The Rourke Art Gallery + Museum, 521 Main Ave., Moorhead
When: On display through Nov. 29
Info: Building entry is by appointment only and masks are required; visit therourke.org to make an appointment
This article is part of a content partnership with The Arts Partnership, a nonprofit organization cultivating the arts in Fargo, Moorhead and West Fargo. For more information, visit https://ift.tt/1quraLP.
The Link LonkOctober 26, 2020 at 07:00PM
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Artist uses little white dress to address uncertainty, explore stories of family and heritage - INFORUM
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