‘Visual Voices’
Exhibition tells stories of Chickasaw culture and life
‘Chikasha poya” is how you say “We are Chickasaw” in the Chickasaw language.
Through the 57 titles of work on display in the “Visual Voices: Contemporary Chickasaw Art Exhibition,” contemporary Chickasaw artists are telling their own stories of what being Chickasaw means to them.
The Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art at the University of Oklahoma is the first stop in the exhibition’s three-year-long tour. The exhibition arrived at the museum in early June and will be moving to the Mississippi Museum of Art on Sept. 9.
Laura Clark, the exhibition’s program manager, spent about five years preparing the exhibition in a partnership with the Chickasaw Nation — and the community’s response to the exhibition has been wonderful to watch, she said.
“A lot of people said ‘We had no idea it was going to be of this caliber,’” Clark said. “‘We didn’t know how beautiful it was going to be.’”
As visitors walk into the exhibition, they are first greeted by the sight of Chickasaw painter Brenda Kingery’s colorful narrative symbolism. Amid a beige canvas, a mesh of symbols and designs representing Kingery’s Chickasaw history, experience and view of her environment, exudes with bright colors.
“There’s a story in each one. It’s very organic, she doesn’t plan it sometimes — it just happens,” Clark said.
Each artist featured in the exhibition has an individual narrative that they express in their own specific way, Clark said.
Another painter, Lokosh (Joshua D. Hinson), demonstrates the importance of his maternal lineage in his work, Clark said.
Lokosh created several images of the women that had been in his family for decades and lined them up in chronological order, leaving only a depiction of himself at the end — signifying the end of his clan.
“All of your clan is passed through your mother,” Clark said. “(Women) were, in more ancient times, very influential actually. They were a part of tribal decision making, tribal councils and that kind of stuff.”
‘A story to tell’
Other Chickasaw artists use three dimensional mediums to funnel their creative expressions.
Joanna Underwood Blackburn’s work can be found dangling from the ceiling of the museum. From the sculpture, hangs 39 rectangular blocks of clay in a formation similar to a wind chime.
Each block of clay contains an inscription on it, which is where the piece gets its name, “Prayers Rising.” Blackburn reached out to all 39 federally recognized tribes in Oklahoma and asked that they write their prayers on the clay blocks, Clark said.
“This represents Oklahoma. It’s not just Chickasaws, but it’s every tribe, and it represents the unity of our state and the diversity of the people who live in it,” Clark said.
One of the clay blocks reads “I pray that we remember our beginning and that we hold on to our stories, those beautiful and painful, so that the sacrifices made will not be forgotten.”
The Visual Voices exhibition is remarkable in that there are so many different mediums and methods that different artists use to express their identity and culture, Clark said.
“You probably won’t see this much diversity in a lot of tribal art shows. This is the cream of the crop right here,” Clark said.
Many times, when people think of tribal art, they think of Southwestern art like Navajo rugs, Pueblo pottery and Concho belts, Clark said. But this exhibition is different in that it is a segment of Southeastern art.
When Clark and members of the Chickasaw Nation began planning out the project, she said they had several goals in mind, but it ended up coming down to one goal, which they considered the most important.
“We wanted to tell the story of the Chickasaw people, and then we also wanted to let people learn about Chickasaw art,” Clark said. “We want to show the world that not only do we have fine art creators, but that we have a story to tell, and it’s a beautiful story.”