Roberta’s Art Gallery in the University Center has collaborated with UW-Whitewater Race and Ethnic Studies, along with the Crossman Gallery for this month’s exhibit, “Unbreakable Strength: Exploring Indigenous Resistance and Healing Through Textiles.”
Upon entering the Gallery you will see dresses hanging from the ceiling, three orange shirts hanging up on a branch that is suspended from the ceiling, two white shirts hanging from the reception desk, pictures surrounding the walls, a big piece of red cloth that has cloth made girls on it, and a projection of water in the middle of the back wall with Agnes Yellow Bear’s voice playing over it.
One of the pieces in the exhibit that drew my attention when entering the gallery is a piece titled “Loved beyond words.” It is a white long-sleeved dress that is decorated with red jingles on t
he sleeves and skirt, a tight red belt with the word “beyond” in white, a red heart slightly above the belt, and a red scarf decorated with a colorful design on a headless mannequin above a small pile of dirt.
When I asked graduate assistant Veena Johnson about the exhibit, she brought attention to that dress and stated how the names that decorate the white dress are women who have not been found. Since Agnes Yellow Bear focuses her work on families that are affected by Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Relatives (MMIWR), we can feel how impactful that piece is to both families and the communities that those women were a part of. The artist brings light to each name on the dress on a slip of paper on the wall to the right of the white dress and talks about how one of the woman’s names on the dress was found in 2020 after being missing for fourteen years.
Another piece in the exhibit that caught my attention is called “Every Child Matters T-shirt.” This piece connects to two other pieces in the gallery titled, “Every Child Matters Mural” and “Orange Shirt Day: North Dakota March.” The piece that represents the “Every Child Matters T-Shirt” is a branch that is holding three orange t-shirts on black hangers with the design Every Child Matters with a print of an Indigenous man and woman. The orange shirt is a tribute to her father who is a survivor of the Residential School System, this orange shirt is a tribute to the children who never returned home from the institution. Orange Shirt Day is Sept. 30 and it’s a call to action to the children’s gravesites that were discovered on the grounds of a former residential school in British Columbia, Canada. The number of graves found was 215 and some of the children were as young as three years old. The survivors shared their horrific stories of being in the institution.
Johnson spoke about how our land in Wisconsin is originally indigenous land and we should have a better understanding of the history that was there before it got wiped out. Her favorite piece is “Loved beyond words,” the dress I mentioned earlier. When you visit make sure to check out that piece and those that surround it.
The reception for this exhibit is Tuesday, Sept. 19. The talk with artist Agnes Yellow Bear will be in Summers Auditorium (located in the UC) at 6 p.m. and Roberta’s Gallery will have an open house for the exhibit 7-8 p.m. The exhibit “Unbreakable Strength: Exploring Indigenous Resistance and Healing Through Textiles” is open until Sept. 18 and can be viewed from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the UC.
