Sonya Kelliher-Combs Merges Collective Data and Native Alaskan Heritage in Combined Media — Colossal


Raised within the Alaska group 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 group, Kelliher-Combs noticed and discovered “time-honored conventional girls’s and collective labor—pores and skin stitching, beading, and meals preparation—that taught her to understand the intimacy of intergenerational data and materials histories,” says an artist assertion within the foreword of the artist’s new monograph, Mark.

“Credible Small Secrets and techniques” (2021-present), sculpture, printed material, human hair, nylon thread, glass beed, and metal pen, variable dimensions. Picture by Chris Arend

Printed by Hirmer Verlag, the quantity explores the breadth of Kelliher-Combs’s observe, from work, sculptures, and installations to her curatorial and group advocacy work.

Drawing on the supplies and symbolism of ancestral, Indigenous data, Kelliher-Combs addresses what she describes as “the continuing battle for self-definition and identification within the Alaskan context,” delving into historical past, tradition, household, and long-held customs.

The works “additionally converse of abuse, marginalization, and the historic and modern struggles of Indigenous peoples within 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 concerning the delicate topic of suicide, the speed of which on the time Kelliher-Combs made the piece was practically 52 Native Alaskans per 100,000—greater than triple the age-adjusted fee amongst Individuals on the whole. The mitts have been all handmade and lent by area people members.

“A Million Tears” (2021), portray and combined media, variable dimensions. Picture by Chris Arend

By means of delicate, tactile sculptures and atmospheric work, the artist venerates historic 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 “past the binary divisions of Western and Indigenous cultures, self and different, and man and nature, to look at the interrelationships and interdependence of those ideas.”

See extra of the artist’s work on her web site, and discover your copy of Mark on Bookshop.

“Credible II” (2022), portray set up, combined media. Picture by Chris Arend
“Credible, Fairbanks” (2019), portray, combined media, 16 x 16 inches. Picture by Minus Area, courtesy of the Denver Artwork Museum, Denver, Colorado
"Credible Small Secrets" (2021-present), sculpture, printed fabric, human hair, nylon thread, glass beed, and steel pen, variable dimensions. Photo by Chris Arend
“Credible Small Secrets and techniques”

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