Sponsored by Olivia & Pres Garrett, Ben Gravely, Shana & Japhet LeGrant, Lynwood Artists and Barbara & Guy Stanley. This exhibit was organized by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Featuring works by contemporary Native American artists, this exhibition underscores the richness and diversity of the contemporary Indigenous experience told through the medium of printmaking.
The works are linked by the belief that words have immeasurable power, particularly when reckoning with how written language has been weaponized against Indigenous people throughout the history of the Americas.
The exhibit introduces several contemporary Native American artists who have worked in the medium of printmaking, including Rick Bartow (Wiyot), Demian Diné Yazhi (Diné/Navajo), Marie Watt (Seneca), Larry McNeil (Tlingit), and others. All artists represented in the exhibition have chosen to incorporate text into their images, using the language of the colonizers of their land to tell their own stories. In this way, words play a powerful role in reclaiming a lost history and adding to the incomplete American narrative. In doing so, they also offer messages of hope, humor, and resilience.
Words Matter is curated by Dr. Johanna Minich, former Assistant Curator of Native American Art.