On display at Multnomah Arts Center Gallery, the exhibition features regional artists’ interpretation of ancestral connections and healing

Whether strengthened by culture and practice or through a journey of reconnection, the art displayed in “Ancestors,” a group exhibition, reveals the many ways ancestral connection shows up in daily life.

The exhibition, on display at the Multnomah Arts Center Gallery at 7688 SW Capitol Highway through July 27 and free to all, features 13 regional artists’ work. Artists Kanani Miyamoto and Steph Littlebird (Grand Ronde) curated the pieces exploring ancestry, relationships with ancestors, queer identities, Indigenous life, migration, sense of self and more.

Miyamoto and Littlebird were familiar with each other’s work as artists active in Portland, and the show’s theme came naturally to them, they said. Miyamoto said her desire to maintain and strengthen her cultural and ancestral connections increased when she moved to Oregon, leaving behind where she grew up on the island of Oahu. Littlebird describes her work as a means of connection to ancestry and also an opportunity to preserve stories and identities.

Littlebird saw potential in this theme, knowing having ancestors is a universal experience, although everyone's experience is different.

For some, ancestors may not be related by blood but are those who came before them serving as guidance. For others, reconnecting with cultural practices and learning about their lineage is an opportunity to reconnect with one’s ancestry.

“This exhibition explores the ways in which different communities maintain their connections,” Miyamoto and Littlebird said in a release about the exhibit. “For many, being in relationship with one’s ancestors is an act of survivance, and through sharing our stories, we can start to imagine a collective existence.”

The show boasts a variety of mediums, including beadwork, ceramic, sculpture, mixed media and more. Featured artists include Amber Kay Ball, Anthony Hudson, amoqiix-araceli, Molly Alloy, marvin parra orozco, Arie Beston, Marybel Martin, Amie Pascal, Jerome Alexander Sloan, Nica Aquino and Christina Martin.

Queer ancestry

The exhibition included one of Littlebird’s pieces titled “Ancestor Shimkhin,” is a reconstructed portrait of Atfalati Kalapuya ancestor Shimkhin. Shimkhin was a 19th-century Two-Spirit healer known for her spirit powers, one of them being the power to become a woman.

Littlebird created the portrait using written and oral documentation to imagine what Shimkhin may have looked like for the 2023 exhibit, “My Father’s Father’s Sister.”

For Littlebird, the exercise in research and reimagining is a reminder of the value of documenting and honoring the legacies of her queer ancestor.

“I know that working with the memory of our ancestors is rife with opportunity to learn,” Littlebird said.

Alloy, also featured in the exhibit, uses driftwood and leather sculpture to examine and connect with queer ancestry. Alloy specifically explores a concept they coined as “queer immortality,” which highlights intergenerational connections between ongoing struggles and relations among queer individuals.

The show includes three pieces they made from unaltered driftwood and dyed leather. Alloy fuses the materials together by stitching the leather onto the driftwood, giving it a second skin.

Their use of materials like driftwood, naturally altered by water, and dyed leather, unnaturally altered by humans, invite the viewer to connect with time and physical place.

“I'm asking these bodies in transition to kind of come and dwell with me as my art objects so that I can do this work,” Alloy said.

Alloy said the pieces brought them an opportunity to better strengthen their relationship with the land they reside on, honor it and connect with their own intuition and ancestral guidance.

One piece on display, “Wapato Island,” a piece of driftwood standing tall with dyed leather stitched around, represents a growing connection and relationship with Wapato Island, or colonially named Sauvie Island. The piece has a pool of blue leather among it, shaped in the outline of Wapato Island. Alloy said they found themself at the beach often, and the piece came as a result of their want to honor the physical place by learning the history of the land and its geography.

Alloy’s concept of queer immortality may have once felt like a metaphor, but as they continued their craft, they said they saw how this concept shows up in their life.

“I do really experience a process of interaction with ancestry through this kind of devotional sculptural practice,” Alloy said.

Challenging norms

One of the largest pieces in the exhibition is Martin’s portrait of artist Frida Kahlo. Kahlo’s gaze is direct and piercing, a mermaid is painted atop her ear, and birds fly across her forehead while an underwater scene exists below her shoulders.

Martin painted “No Quiero Ser la Única (I Don’t Want to be the Only One)” as a testament to her struggle to find other Latinx female artists. Martin said she was disappointed in how difficult it was to find other American-born, Latin American women artists to be in community with.

“What I would like, especially (for) girls, is to see something and say, ‘You know what? I could do that,’” Martin said.

The piece uses the portrait of Kahlo as an internationally recognized artist to challenge viewers to think of other Latin American women artists in their communities. Martin said this piece took several years to paint and was at a different pace than the usual illustrations she creates for stickers and prints.

Martin said the long, intimate and emotional journey of painting on a canvas was the opportunity she needed to remember why she wanted to become an artist in the first place. In terms of ancestry, the theme allowed Martin to reflect on artists in her own family and those who did not have a chance to explore their creativity in art.

“I always wonder, as I'm drawing, ‘Who else had this knack for drawing and creating and making things in my family?’” Martin said. “Because it's there. I see it.”

Also in the exhibition are tall, mixed-material photo collages by Miyamoto. The pieces challenge stereotypes of Native Hawaiians and other Pacific Islanders perpetuated by “tiki culture” — specifically depictions of Indigenous Hawaiian women as subservient, dancing dolls in grass skirts whose role is to entertain. The pieces prompt the viewer to think about negative stereotypes tiki bars perpetuate by using photographs outside of local bars Hale Pele and The Alibi, popular venues for Portlanders to enjoy the fanfare of “tiki culture.”

She points to a broader ancestry of Hawaiian revolutionaries and leaders like activist Haunani-Kay Trask and Hawaiian queen and last sovereign monarch, Lili’uokalani. Creating critical thought and dialogue while also uplifting and creating space for other artists of color is at the heart of Miyamoto’s work, she said.

“Giving artists and people of color places where they can tell their stories from their perspectives is important,” Miyamoto said.

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