Representation, Collaboration & Clay: Conversation with Sydnie & Haylie Jimenez

This summer I had the opportunity to sit down with twin sisters Sydnie and Haylie Jimenez as they rounded out a two year stint at the Archie Bray Foundation for Ceramic Arts. We sat down in The Bray’s library to recap on life and art just a couple weeks before they headed back to Chicago to continue the next chapter in their creative practice. The sisters shared about their upbringing and how growing up with mixed heritage in a mostly white community revealed that art can be a tool for nourishment and survival. They reflected on how in attending the School of The Art Institute of Chicago, they finally found their reflection in the BIPOC student body. And we learn how Sydnie began her clay practice, eventually landing on ceramics by utilizing SIAC’s large kilns. Haylie shares her practice of hand drawn animation, providing her the skills she utilizes today through large scale drawings and works on clay.  The artists share how they respectively work with the figure and storytelling, each drawing from identity and representation in an autobiographical nature. The sisters explain how they maintain a practice rooted in DIY culture, making clothes and other accessible pieces as HANDS, along with their more formal artworks. As they round out their journey at The Bray, the sisters reflect on their time in Montana, and we chat about the American clay world and how historically there has been a lack of diversity and representation. We also touch on the gap between the clay and craft markets and the fine art market. We chat about how the sisters inform each other creatively through collaboration while maintaining their own aesthetic and diverse practices - Sydnie produces large scale figurative work and Haylie carves on clay, complimenting her active drawing practice and tattoo trade. As we end our conversation the sisters remind us to take time and nourish our bodies and minds as we push to make space in the world for our communities to thrive creatively.

Sydnie Jimenez (b. Orlando, FL) received a BFA from SAIC (2020) focusing in ceramic sculpture and is a recipient of the Windgate- Lamar Fellowship (2020). Much of her work centers around the representation of black and brown youth in an American context. She illustrates in clay self-expression as a form of protest and self care to protect against a Eurocentric society founded on white supremacy and colonization. Jimenez is currently a long-term resident at Lillstreet Art Center in Chicago. 

Born in Orlando and raised in Chattanooga, Haylie later moved to Chicago to attend the School of The Art Institute of Chicago (BFA 2020). Finding Black and Brown Queer community in Chicago and her long lasting relationships with friends and family in Tennessee was and is a pivotal influence for her work which surrounds the importance of belonging, collective care, self expression, and moving through hardships to times of joy together within these communities. She is currently working out of Chicago developing her ceramic and drawing practice, preparing for various shows with her twin sister, Sydnie Jimenez. 

You're Welcome: Conversation with Paul Farber, Cannupa Hanska Luger, and Ozi Uduma

For this episode of Broken Boxes I am joined by Monument Lab Director Paul Farber, University of Michigan Museum of Art Assistant Curator of Global Contemporary Art Ozi Uduma and artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. We gathered together in Ann Arbor Michigan in late September 2023 at the University of Michigan’s Media Center during the opening week of the monumental project and accompanying exhibition by Luger titled, You’re Welcome was developed over the course of two years between Cannupa, Monument Lab and the University of Michigan Museum of Art. This podcast conversation was a chance for the three creatives to speak vulnerably to the process of taking on such a large endeavor and how much care and energy goes into the creation of a project of this magnitude. We learn about the three primary components to the presentation including GIFT, an experimental, time-based, commissioned work by Luger on the front facade of UMMA’s Alumni Memorial Hall which challenges institutional memory and the whitewashing of history. GIFT is accompanied by two indoor installations: Meat for the Beast in the museums Irving Stenn, Jr. Family Gallery, which delves into Luger’s artistic practice and the relationship between museum collections and resource extraction; and Monument Lab: Public Classroom in the Art Gym, which examines formal and informal modes of memory. Moving through the conceptual application of this work, Paul, Ozi and Cannupa break down the larger themes of whiteness, language and time, and unpack the anchoring question of the project, How do we Remember?. The three offer their personal and professional reflections on implementing a project of this magnitude and it’s unknown long term impact. And in speaking to GIFT and the larger constellation of exhibiting works, Paul reflects,  “This is an art project that doesn’t quite have a precedent. And that’s the point. It has cousins and kin and points of inspiration and citation, but this work is actually seeking to do something that has never been done in this way.”  Over all, You’re Welcome explores the relationship between the Museum’s historic building, the land it stands on, and a long history of colonial narratives deeply embedded in public structures. It supports critical dialogues about the responsibilities of public institutions as cultural history makers and stewards, and it is a key component of UMMA’s ongoing efforts to challenge its history and practices to create an institution more reflective of its community and honest in its explorations of art, culture, and society.

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HOW DO WE REMEMBER?

How do we remember on this campus? This is the central question asked in You’re Welcome, a dynamic three-part exhibition. The result of a multiyear collaboration with artist Cannupa Hanska Luger and nonprofit public art and history studio Monument Lab, You’re Welcome examines the foundational narratives of the land occupied by the University of Michigan and both national and global discourse on nationalism, land sovereignty, militarism, colonialism, and sites of memory.

GIFT

The centerpiece of the You’re Welcome exhibition, Cannupa Hanska Luger’s GIFT, is an experimental, time-based, commissioned work, responding to and challenging the University of Michigan’s origin story and the stewardship of the land it occupies. 

In September 2023, Luger, a multidisciplinary artist and enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota), painted the word “GIFT” in white porcelain clay slip on the columns of Alumni Memorial Hall, a neoclassical war memorial erected in 1910 that now houses UMMA. His point of departure is the 1817 Treaty of Fort Meigs, in which Ottawa, Chippewa, and Potawatomi tribes “gifted” land to the University that was then sold to found its endowments. 

MEAT FOR THE BEAST

Meat for the Beast comprises two works by the multidisciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger: This is Not a Snake and The One Who Checks and The One Who Balances. An enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota), Luger was born and raised on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation. This is Not a Snake was created there, in the aftermath of the 2016 Dakota Access Pipeline protests. The “snake” is a serpentine monster made of riot gear, ceramics, fiber, steel, oil drums, concertina wire, ammunition cans, trash, beadwork, and other found objects. Interspersed within the creature’s body are artworks from UMMA’s collection selected by Luger and the exhibition’s curators to reflect on the historical and contemporary destruction and extraction of land as an expendable resource.

By positioning the “snake” as if it’s ingesting objects from the museum’s collection, Luger compares the damage done by extractive industries on Indigenous lands to that of museums, which have historically extracted objects and culture from Indigenous communities. 

MONUMENT LAB: PUBLIC CLASSROOM

How do we remember on this campus? In addressing this central question of the exhibition You’re Welcome, Monument Lab, a nonprofit public art and history studio, worked with lead artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, University of Michigan Museum of Art staff, and University students, staff, and faculty to gather hundreds of responses. Using 121 of these compiled responses as a starting point, this “classroom” acts as an exploration of memory itself—how we remember, the physical and ephemeral forms memories take, and how they come to constitute the campus itself. This classroom includes a broad range of ways we remember—instances of personal, collective, ancestral, speculative, and institutional approaches to memory. 

Featured song: A Tribe Called Red Ft. Hellnback - The Peoples\' Champ

An Indigenous Present: Conversation with Jeffrey Gibson and Jenelle Porter

In this episode I had the honor to sit down with artist Jeffrey Gibson joined by curator and co-editor of An Indigenous Present, Jenelle Porter. We were given space at SITE Santa Fe in Director Louis Grachos office to have a long and generative conversation while we celebrated the book's launch over Indian Market weekend. We talk about Jeff’s practice and his journey to this moment and the Artist shares the vulnerable, complicated, difficult and joyous path of choosing to be an Artist, offering reflection from what he has learned along the way, understanding how the practice and studio has evolved in the 20 some years of being a working Artist. We then dive in with both Jeff and Jenelle to speak on Jeff’s thought process behind An Indigenous Present, learning about the years of care and intention behind the project, which is, as Jeff reflects, an “Artist book about Artists”.  We round out our 2 plus hour chat with the excitement and work that has come with Jeffrey being named the artist to represent the U.S. at the 60th Venice Biennale. As we end our chat, both Jeff and Jenelle share important and practical insight on how to navigate the art worlds and art markets and Jeffrey reminds us all that “Artists do have the power to set precedence in institutions”. 

Featured song: SMOKE RINGS SHIMMERS ENDLESS BLUR by Laura Ortman 2023
Broken Boxes introduction song by India Sky
More about the publication: An Indigenous Present

Jeffrey Gibson:

Jeffrey Gibson’s work fuses his Choctaw-Cherokee heritage and experience of living in Europe, Asia and the USA with references that span club culture, queer theory, fashion, politics, literature and art history. The artist’s multi-faceted practice incorporates painting, performance, sculpture, textiles and video, characterised by vibrant colour and pattern.

Jeffrey Gibson. Photo by Shayla Blatchford 2023

Gibson was born in 1972, Colorado, USA and he currently lives and works in Hudson Valley, New York.

The artist combines intricate indigenous artisanal handcraft – such as beadwork, leatherwork and quilting – with narratives of contemporary resistance in protest slogans and song lyrics. This “blend of confrontation and pageantry” is reinforced by what Felicia Feaster describes as a “sense of movement and performance as if these objects ... are costumes waiting for a dancer to inhabit them.” The artist harnesses the power of such materials and techniques to activate overlooked narratives, while embracing the presence of historically marginalised identities.

Gibson explains: “I am drawn to these materials because they acknowledge the global world. Historically, beads often came from Italy, the Czech Republic or Poland, and contemporary beads can also come from India, China and Japan. Jingles originated as the lids of tobacco and snuff tins, turned and used to adorn dresses, but now they are commercially made in places such as Taiwan. Metal studs also have trade references and originally may have come from the Spanish, but also have modern references to punk and DIY culture. It’s a continual mash-up.”

Acknowledging music as a key element in his experience of life as an artist, pop music became one of the primary points of reference in Gibson’s practice: musicians became his elders and lyrics became his mantras. Recent paintings synthesise geometric patterns inspired by indigenous American artefacts with the lyrics and psychedelic palette of disco music.

Solo exhibitions include ‘THE SPIRITS ARE LAUGHING’, Aspen Art Museum, Colorado (2022); ‘This Burning World’, Institute of Contemporary Art, San Francisco, California (2022); ‘The Body Electric’, SITE Santa Fe, New Mexico (2022) and Frist Art Museum, Nashville (2023); ‘INFINITE INDIGENOUS QUEER LOVE’, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, Massachusetts (2021); ‘To Feel Myself Beloved on the Earth’, Benenson Center, Art Omi, Ghent, New York (2021); ‘When Fire is Applied to a Stone It Cracks’, Brooklyn Art Museum, Brooklyn, New York (2020); ‘The Anthropophagic Effect’, New Museum, New York City, New York (2019); ‘Like a Hammer’, Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Madison, Wisconsin (2019); Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington (2019); Mississippi Museum of Art, Jackson, Mississippi (2019); Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado (2018); ‘This Is the Day’, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas (2019); Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, Clinton, New York (2018) and ‘Love Song’, Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts (2013). For the Toronto Biennial 2022, Gibson presented an evolving installation featuring fifteen moveable stages at Museum of Contemporary Art Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Other recent group exhibitions include ‘Dreamhome’, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (2022); ‘Crafting America’, Crystal Bridges, Bentonville, Arkansas (2021); ‘Monuments Now’, Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, New York (2020); ‘Duro Olowu: Seeing Chicago’, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Illinois (2020) and The Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York (2019). Works can be found in the collections of Denver Art Museum, Denver, Colorado; Eiteljorg Museum, Indianapolis, Indiana; High Museum of Art, Atlanta, Georgia; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts; The Museum of Modern Art, New York City, New York; National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada; Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California; Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC and Whitney Museum of American Art, New York City, New York, amongst others. Gibson is a recipient of numerous awards, notably a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship (2019), Joan Mitchell Foundation, Painters and Sculptors Grant (2015) and Creative Capital Award (2005).

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Jenelle Porter:

Jenelle Porter is a curator and writer living in Los Angeles. Current and recent exhibitions include career surveys of Barbara T. Smith (ICA LA, 2023) and Kay Sekimachi (Berkeley Art Museum, 2021); Less Is a Bore: Maximalist Art & Design (ICA/Boston, 2019); and Mike Kelley: Timeless Painting (Mike Kelley Foundation and Hauser & Wirth, New York, 2019). She is co-editor of An Indigenous Present with artist Jeffrey Gibson (fall 2023), and a Viola Frey monograph (fall 2024).

From 2011 to 2015 Porter was Mannion Family Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, where she organized Fiber: Sculpture 1960–present and Figuring Color: Kathy Butterly, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Roy McMakin, Sue Williams, as well as monographic exhibitions of the work of Jeffrey Gibson, Jessica Jackson Hutchins, Dianna Molzan, Christina Ramberg, Mary Reid Kelley, Arlene Shechet, and Erin Shirreff. Her exhibitions have twice been honored by the International Association of Art Critics. As Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia (2005–10), Porter organized Dance with Camera and Dirt on Delight: Impulses That Form Clay, the first museum surveys of Trisha Donnelly and Charline von Heyl, and numerous other projects.

From 1998–2001 Porter was curator at Artists Space, New York. She began her career in curatorial positions at both the Walker Art Center and the Whitney Museum of American Art.

She has authored books and essays including those on artists Polly Apfelbaum, Kathy Butterly, Viola Frey, Jeffrey Gibson, Sam Gilliam, Jay Heikes, Margaret Kilgallen, Liz Larner, Ruby Neri, and Matthew Ritchie, among others.

Long Con: Sterlin Harjo & Cannupa Hanska Luger, Ep 5

Long Con is a series of conversations between Director Sterlin Harjo and Artist Cannupa Hanska Luger about life, art, film, history and everything in between - informally shared from the lens of two contemporary Native American artists and friends actively participating in the record of the 21st century.

This episode is the fifth conversation between Harjo and Luger on Broken Boxes, and the artists dive right in, chatting about conspiracy theories, aliens, AI, Indigenous ceramic practices, the current state of the film industry and the writers strike, how creating sanctuary for producing big ideas is important and how everyone's creative process is different, so it’s about finding what your groove is. They also speak about fatherhood, the importance of storytelling, and of course the final season of Reservation Dogs - Season 3 - which premieres August 2nd, just days after this episode airs. Sterlin shares why he decided to complete the series after three seasons and reflects on his adventures of being a showrunner for a production that has changed the face of television for Indigenous people, and how making this work has, in turn, changed him. I am excited to see what comes next for our dear friend Sterlin. Broken Boxes will continue to produce these long conversations between the two artists and also we are so excited for Sterlin’s podcast The Cuts to activate again, please go listen to his podcast archive If you have not yet!

Sterlin Harjo is an award winning Seminole/Muscogee Creek filmmaker who has directed three feature films and a feature documentary all of which address the contemporary Native American lived experience. Harjo is a founding member of the five-member Native American comedy group, The 1491s. Sterlin’s latest project Reservation Dogs, is a television show created in collaboration with Taika Waititi, now available to watch on FX. 

Cannupa Hanska Luger is a multidisciplinary artist who creates monumental and situational installations and durational performance and often initiates community participation and social collaboration. Raised on the Standing Rock Reservation in North Dakota, he is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota descent. 

Music featured: 25 and Wastin’ Time by Vincent Neil Emerson
Broken Boxes intro track by India Sky

Instructions For A Future: Conversation with Amaryllis R. Flowers

Nine years after our first conversation on Broken Boxes Podcast, I got to circle back with one of my besties, and the incredible artist now known as Amaryllis R. Flowers. Amaryllis works across materials from drawing to video, to performance to clay, creating a visual language paying attention to the spaces in-between categories, and revering those that know the trouble and pleasure there. It was a warm early summer day and we sat outside in the clover fields at the Rockefeller Brothers Estate in New York where Amaryllis was an artist in residence at the Pocantico Center. 

In our conversation, Amaryllis reflects on her journey in claiming and reframing what the term Artist can mean, how it can evolve. She gives us a glimpse into the adventures and miseducation of the formal art school path and how her experiences in academia have had lasting effects on her life and practice, both positive and negative. Amaryllis takes some time to speak vulnerably about mental health and how stigmatized certain diagnoses still are in our society. She shares her own path of healing over the past few years and provides tangible resources and support systems she has gleaned in finding wellness. We speak to her current experience of reclaiming her way as Artist, as she reforms a more balanced and generative relationship with her practice and the artworld. 

Amaryllis R. Flowers is a Queer Puerto Rican American Artist living and working in upstate New York. Raised between multiple cities and rural communities across America in a constantly shifting landscape, her practice explores themes of hybridity, mythology and sexuality. Drawing inspiration from visual systems of communication such as comics, cartoons, codices, Egyptian scrolls, sympathetic magic, Caribbean Surrealisms, and alchemical diagrams for transformation, Amaryllis  creates non-linear symbol sets that buck colonial notions of how to navigate and describe our world. Where taste has been constructed by these notions, she aims to create work of questionable taste, utilizing color and material classed as “femme” and casting it to the center of the circle. Illuminated with fluorescents, metallics, and iridescence, these images refuse a naturalizing aesthetic of the universe.

Amaryllis earned an MFA from the Yale School of Art in 2019 and her BFA from California College of Arts and Crafts in 2014. She is the recipient of the 2023 Pocantico Prize from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a 2022-2027 Joan Mitchell Fellow, and a 2021 Creative Capital Awardee. Her work has been exhibited both nationally and internationally including at the Brooklyn Museum, El Museo Del Barrio (New York), The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art (Ridgefield, CT), MoCADA (Brooklyn), and SOMArts (San Francisco). 

Artist Website
Featured Song: Goin’ Looney by Big Freedia