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-We're in beautiful Seattle
at Solas Gallery in Pioneer Square.
When I see the work on the wall today
and I look at it, I think to myself,
"This is what I wanted to say.
I wanted these images to be uncanny and dark."
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I grew up on the Chehalis Indian Reservation
in Southwest Washington, and I have six siblings.
And my mom and my siblings still live there.
I think it was around 2016,
I started to be curious about the power
that dressing up like an Indian for Halloween had,
and people being very enraged
at someone who would dress as a native for Halloween
and not be native. So I started to be curious
about why those objects had so much power
and what was it about the objects
that provoked so much emotion.
And so I decided to consult the objects themselves.
I bought them on eBay and Amazon,
and started to collect them and decontextualize them
in a large black box and photograph them.
And so what you're seeing on the walls right now
are this five-year-long process of collecting the objects,
photographing them, kind of taking everything away.
The jerseys don't have a player in them.
The headdress is not at a festival.
I believe that the way that indigenous people
have been viewed or placed is in the past,
and as not a present, modern population.
And if you place and keep a people in the past,
you can make them a myth and then you can consume them.
That can be something you can embody.
Of course, it's this ubiquitous activity
to consume objects in our world right now.
I'm curious more about what it would take
for someone to wear them than to buy them,
and when they wear the objects, what place they go to,
when they're wearing the objects,
what sort of unconscious thoughts
that they're expressing
through the purchase and donning of the objects.
[ Indistinct conversations in background ]
Whenever I do something that is important to me,
I have to invite my ancestors to be there with me.
I owe them their presence.
Thank you for being here.
And then I also have to consider
the people that will come after me.
Otherwise, you're going to make a mess of things.
[ Chuckles ]
It would be impossible to be an indigenous person
making contemporary work about indigenous identity
without being political.
But my hope is that it pushes the boundaries
of how we think about each other,
and it works more towards a space of reconciliation
that we're working together to understand each other.
We've been here for thousands of years,
and then thousands of years after I'm gone,
we'll still be here.
And I also believe that we will last a long time
with the things that we can teach and make and create,
that our culture is going to last forever.
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-"Object/Ritual" runs now through January 2024
at Solas Gallery
and opens at the Suquamish Museum in May 2024.
Explore more of Selena's work at selenakearney.com.
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Catch Art Zone Friday nights at 8
and anytime online at SeattleChannel.org/ArtZone
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