Gathering
ORGANIZED BY VALERIE ST. PIERRE SMITH
SEPTEMBER 13TH - OCTOBER 18TH, 2024
Gathering, a collaborative exhibition organized by Valerie St. Pierre Smith, considers the act of gathering–gathering kin, gathering medicine, gathering songs–as an embodied practice that uplifts indigenous lifeways and ancestral healing practices. Exhibition artists and organizers assert food and plant medicine pathways in the immersive, indigenized environment of the exhibition space to question the disconnects and detachments of an increasingly commodified contemporary health and wellness industry.
Grounded by a series of altars to the four sacred seasons, elements, plants, animals, and phases of human life, the installation brings indigenous of frameworks of healing, reciprocity, and care to the fore. Natural plant kin gathered by Mi’oux Stabler, songs of sandhill cranes recorded by Alex Jacobsen, and photo and projected video by Noah Smith transpose the contours of land and sky onto the gallery space. A central table sits at the heart of the installation inviting conversation, reflection, and rest. As a collective whole, the works in the exhibition shore up relational forms of healing that remedy both body and spirit.
Installation Images
About the Artists
Alex Jacobsen explores the interconnectedness of space, memory, and body primarily through psychoacoustics and somatic vibrations. Visually, they often use found electronics, liquids, and naked loudspeakers to create ceaselessly changing environments. In live performances, Alex often incorporates feedback, processed recordings, and amplified objects, creating a collectively remembered soundscape. In recent years, Alex has contributed music for a number of film and dance projects, and their work has been featured across the United States, Mexico, and Europe, including Radiophrenia Art Festival, ESS’s Quarantine Concert Series, and Konvent Puntzero.
Valerie St. Pierre Smith A two-spirit mischief maker, multi-disciplinary designer/artisan, scholar, writer, and healer, Valerie has an eclectic creative background including fiber arts, costume, textile, and fashion design. Her costume work has been seen across the country with highlights that include McCarter Theater, Berkeley Rerpertory Theatre, The Kennedy Center, Woolly Mammoth Theatre, Mixed Blood Theatre, Sea World: San Diego, the National Museum of the American Indian, and Pilobolus Dance Theatre. A bit of a unicorn, Valerie’s creative research and scholarly work focuses on appropriation, inspiration, representation, and decolonization in western design practices. Her creative practice explores, and is deeply influenced by, her lived experiences as a mixed-blood Annishnaabe kwe, focusing on the confluence of healing, social justice, traditional Anishinaabe teachings, and the power of identity. St. Pierre Smith holds a B.F.A from Stephens College, and an M.F.A from San Diego State University.
Noah Smith is a photographer based in Omaha, NE currently attending Central High School. His foray into photography started when he got a camera before he went on a family trip to Africa. He has reignited his interest in photography over the past year. Combined with his interest in meteorology, his type of photography is focused mainly on capturing dynamic weather and natural phenomenon, but he ventures into different genres as well.
Mi’oux Stabler is a member of the Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation whose tribal lands are located in northeast Nebraska along the banks of the Missouri River. She is a proud mother, artist, land tender, and a dedicated cultural advocate. For the past decade, her endeavors have been geared towards the revitalization of traditional languages and land stewardship practices. She has traveled extensively, but currently focuses her work in the ancestral homelands of the Umoⁿhoⁿ people.
Casey Welsch is a working class writer, cook, journalist, and organizer. Born and raised on a dryland Nebraska farm, he now lives and works in central Omaha. As a multimedia journalist in southeast Nebraska, Casey started a community news service at KZUM radio in Lincoln, was a founding member of the Dandelion Network mutual aid group, and was a regular contributor to Hear Nebraska and Perfect Pour magazine. These days he is focusing on his other life's work as a cook, working at Methodist Hospital, feeding the sick and those who care for them.