This document provides a summary of an exhibition featuring the work of Sonya Kelliher-Combs and Nadia Myre. Kelliher-Combs combines organic and synthetic materials like walrus stomach, sealskin, and acrylic polymer to create works addressing themes of ownership and identity. Myre's work focuses on scarring and features a communal project where participants render their scars on canvas. The exhibition highlights both artists' exploration of skin as a material and metaphor to make sophisticated and primal personal statements connecting to their Native heritage.

1. reviewed
Hide:
Skin as
Material
and
Metaphor
By Beverly Sanders
Two makers who find in tin a medium for
revealing personal watements in ways xat are
simultaneously sophiwicated and primal.
George Gustav Heye Center Animal skins—hides—have played an im- medium of acrylic polymer, augmenting the
Smithsonian National Museum portant role in traditional Native Ameri- texture with nylon threads, glass beads and
of the American Indian can culture and identity, and the National reindeer fur. The surface is mottled and
New York, ny Museum of the American Indian has regu- bumpy; the colors enhance the play of light.
Part One: Sonya Kelliher-Combs larly exhibited such venerable objects as The hanging threads remind one of fur trim
and Nadia Myre beaded deerskin garments and paintings on on a parka.
Mar. 6 – Aug. 1, 2010 buffalo hide. But this two-part exhibition, The pouch form reappears three-dimen-
nmai.si.edu curated by Kathleen Ash-Milby, is not sionally in Kelliher-Combs’s wall installa-
about tradition. Contemporary artists who tion Small Secrets, a row of diminutive fin-
Part Two of “Hide” will be at the museum are known in the art world but retain strong gertip-shaped containers made of walrus
Sept. 4, 2010 – Jan. 16, 2011. ties to their Native communities were in- stomach bristling with human hair, glass
vited to address skin as an actual art mate- beads and nylon thread. They resemble del-
rial and as a vehicle for comments on a icate empty shells that once enclosed a form
range of social issues. The first part high- or substance. Common Thread, a similar but
lights two makers known for multimedia larger installation, comprises three rows of
work who find in skin or its representation pouches, stitched from reindeer and sheep
Kelliher-Combs photos Kevin G. Smith.
a medium for revealing personal statements rawhide rather than stomach membrane.
in ways that are simultaneously sophisti- Even more redolent of her Alaska heri-
cated and primal. tage is her series Brand, in which Kelliher-
Alaskan-born Sonya Kelliher-Combs Combs has brought together walrus stom-
(Inupiaq/Athabascan) combines organic ach, seal intestines, reindeer, polar bear,
and synthetic materials in works that con- elk and moose fur, seal skin and the like,
vey intimacy in their tactility, yet are baf- as well as acrylic polymer, nylon thread,
fling in their hidden meanings. In the series paper and cotton to create 15 panels. She
Walrus Family Portraits, she layers ghostly aggressively “processes” these skins, stitch-
pouch-shaped walrus stomachs within a ing them or branding them with circular
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2. “pores” or piercing them with metal grom- work, Landscape of Sorrow, also of canvas
mets, the last suggesting human domina- and cotton thread but done by Myre alone,
tion of nature. This work is about “making is a grouping of six horizontal canvases,
things our own, ownership and control,” each depicting a long scar through a slit in
she has said. the canvas “healed” by irregular stitching.
Unlike Kelliher-Combs, Nadia Myre The theme continues in Scarscapes, sev-
(Anishinaabe), an artist living in Montreal, eral small rectangles made from glass beads
does not use organic materials to comment and cotton thread, each with the central
on skin. Her preoccupation is scars, and image of a black scar against a white back-
more than half of her part of the exhibit ground. On the wall nearby are greatly en-
is devoted to The Scar Project, a communal larged photographic images of details of the
work. Since 2005, Myre has held work- beaded works. Such pieces indicate Myre’s
shops in which she provides participants pride in her Native heritage and its beading
with 10-inch-square canvases and invites tradition. Such pride is conveyed in a more
them to render their own scars—bodily or visceral way in Inkanatatation, a short digi-
mental—by cutting and “suturing” the raw tal video documenting the artist having her
cloth. The 240 canvases (out of some 500 in arm tattooed in a design of three red feath-
the project) are arranged on both sides of ers. It is meant to suggest an alteration in
a large gallery. Although much of the work the Canadian flag—the replacement of the
seemed primitive as sewing, the cumulative maple leaf with feathers—as a way of honor-
Opposite: Above: effect is powerful and visually harmonious ing the country’s aboriginal peoples. With
Sonya Kelliher-Combs Sonya Kelliher-Combs because of the nearly monochromatic ef- its mingling of red ink and blood, this film
Small Secrets, 2009, Salmon Walrus Family
detail, walrus stomach, Portrait, 2009-10, fect—beige, white and light brown threads returns the “ouch” factor to what has been
human hair, mixed acrylic polymer, walrus against the off-white canvas. What might presented at a remove in Myre’s scar instal-
media, dimensions stomach, reindeer fur, have been presented as bloody wounds or lations, and reminds the viewer that skin,
variable. mixed media,
67¹⁄³ x 39¾ in. disfiguring stitches are abstracted, even real skin, is the subject of this exhibition.
aestheticized, by the subtle colors. Another The catalog is $23.95.
Myre photos ©Nadia Myre, licensed by CARCC, Ontario and VAGA, New York.
Left: Right:
Nadia Myre Nadia Myre
The Scar Project, The Scar Project, 2005-
2005-present, present, detail
detail of installation, of single canvas,
cut and sewn canvases, 10 x 10 x 2 in.
stories on paper,
each 10 x 10 x 2 in.
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