Beverly Sanders reviews the 2010 art exhibition Hide: Skin as Material and Metaphor at the George Gustav Heye Center Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, hightlighting the artwork of Nadia Myre and Sonia Kelliher-Combs in the August-September 2010 issue of American Craft magazine.

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