“’kNot free, kNot human’” and the Decolonizing of Art

There are a number of wonderful art exhibitions for you to visit in Seattle this September. At the top of the list is Carletta Carrington Wilson’s large exhibition at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art. “Carletta Carrington Wilson: Object Lessons” closes on Sept 20. The Museum makes a perfect day trip with a bus to downtown Seattle, a beautiful ferry ride and a short walk to the museum.

Wilson is a poet as much as a visual artist, and her wonderful sense of the multiple meanings of words flows through all of her art. Usually her words have double or triple meanings as in “kNot free kNot human.” She creates stunning aesthetic objects to educate us to the horrors of slavery.

This display, really a retrospective, includes examples from many of her series, and new work announced in the three story window of the museum: “Utopia: When You Get There Remember Where You Came From,” a reference to the erasing of home cultures in Africa during slavery. In the small upstairs gallery at the top of the entrance stairs, that theme is continued with kitsch figures forming the letters of utopia, and a long poem about possession and other works referring to cotton.

In the main body of the exhibition, we are initially overwhelmed with the colors and textures: Carletta uses the rich fabrics of silks and satins that slave traders exchanged for slaves. The works divide into distinct series: “Constellation of shadows and leaves” (2006), the “Mingus Series” (2008), the “Book of the Bound” (2011), in honor of slaves who could not read, “knot my name haint my house” ( 2015), and “kNot free, kNot human,” (2023). On one wall hangs “the knotted line of cloth cord, thread, bones, wire.” These tangled knots speak to the mixture of blood lines among slaves and the impossibility of tracing ancestry. Another pair of hanging works titled “resist dying” describe both the technique and the action; below it is a “blood knot,” a tangled rich red colored cloth.

Indigenous Craft

Also at the Bainbridge Island Museum of Art is “Indigenous Craft” which celebrates some of our many contemporary indigenous artists. The masks are the most immediately striking works. Larry “Ulaaq” Ahvakaena, and Jennfer Angiak’s masks range from anguished to amusing. Some of our most famous contemporary artists are also included: David Boxley expertly paints formline designs on bentwood boxes and other surfaces, Dan Friday hand sculpts glass in various pastel colors, Joe Feddersen weaves waxed linen thread into baskets with amusing iconography like Parking Lot, and Aggressive Attitude, and Preston Singleton selected two Raven pieces from his recent exhibition “A Clockwork Raven” called Emerald City and Shadow Man, both in blown and sand carved glass, and part of a story the artist told at the opening.

Eric Paul Riege and Joiri Minaya

If you feel like venturing to the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington, you will also find there two provocative exhibitions: Eric Paul Riege (Ojo|-|ólǫ́) and Joiri Minaya. Riege is a Diné artist playing with colonial stereotypes and misinterpreted authentic indigenous art from museum collections. Joiri Minaya has roots in the Dominican Republic. She is also playing with stereotypes, in her case in the Caribbean. “To Hell with Hibiscus” delves into the misnomer “Tropics.” The blurring of Caribbean and Pacific cultures in Hawaiian shirts for example, or in her performances in neoclassical poses in front of a jungle scene with camouflage clothes of jungle patterns.

Both Riege and Minaya give us a lot to enjoy. Riege’s oversized “indigenous” jewelry or Minaya’s videos of creating and rubbing out her wall paintings are both amusing. But they are also serious statements about how value and meaning is bestowed on art. Near us in Leschi, Wa Na Wari (911 24 th ave) and AMcE gallery (612 19 th ave) about whom I have previously written, are also holding excellent exhibitions.