Exhibition:Kelly Church & Cherish Parrish: In Our Words, An Intergenerational Dialogue
2024-10-12 11:00 - 17:00 (America/Detroit) | Off Campus Location
Exhibition Dates: September 13 – December 7, 2024Opening Reception: September 19, 2024

Kelly Church & Cherish Parrish: In Our Words, An Intergenerational Dialogue is a major exhibition that centers the subjectivities of two contemporary Indigenous artists whose practices have sustained and bolstered the relevance of the age-old Anishinaabe practice of black ash basket-making in the 21st century. The exhibition highlights the significance of community-based conversations between mother and daughter, and their ongoing conversations with elders (ancestors), young folx, and future generations as vital aspects of their methodology. These conversations often take place during basket gatherings - where community members come together and share stories and teachings that can encompass Anishinaabe creation stories, as well as those of survivance and resilience, to inform the materiality and liveness of their work. The curatorial and interpretive framework of this exhibition contends that the deeply situated and temporal works by Church (Stamps, BFA 1998) and Parrish (LSA, BA 2020) are repositories for Anishinaabe ways of knowing, thinking, and making that contribute to the complexity of American art and its histories. The expansive and bold practices of Church and Parrish affirm the sovereignty of Anishinaabe lifeways and the importance of including Indigenous narratives that have systematically been left out. Thus, the thematic survey of their work will explore the under-examined themes that inform their work such as Native women’s labor as carriers of culture and knowledge-keepers, the legacy of boarding schools and ancestors who walked on, the treaties in Michigan and the long-overlooked legacy of Anishinaabe intellectual life and their relevance today. Just like the practice of weaving and interlacing distinct strips of black ash to create one whole, Church and Parrish will address the diverse and interconnected themes with approximately 30-35 works, including 15-17 new works. Together, the exhibition offers an incisive critique of the colonial, racist paradigm of systemic erasure and assimilation that continues to this day, with the ongoing crises of missing and murdered Indigenous women, culture wars, and climate change that threaten Indigenous ways of living, sustenance, and making.
Curated by Srimoyee Mitra with Curatorial Assistant Zoi Crampton.
Stamps Gallery is grateful to Michigan Humanities and U-M Arts Initiative for generously supporting the exhibition and programs.

Exhibition:Unsettling Histories: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism
2024-10-12 11:00 - 20:00 | Museum of Art - European and American Decorative Art
Organized as a response to the Museum’s recent acquisition of Titus Kaphar’s Flay (James Madison), this upcoming reinstallation of one of our most prominent gallery spaces forces us to grapple with our collection of European and American art, 1650-1850.

In recent times, growing public awareness of the continued reverberations of the legacy of slavery and colonization has challenged museums to examine the uncomfortable histories contained in our collections, and challenged the public to probe the choices we make about those stories. Choices about which artists you see in our galleries, choices about what relevant facts we share about the works, and choices about what - out of an infinite number of options - we don’t say about them.

Pieces in this exhibition were made at a time when the world came to be shaped by the ideologies of colonial expansion and Western domination. And yet, that history and the stories of those marginalized do not readily appear in the still lives and portraits on display here. By grappling with what is visible and what remains hidden, we are forced to examine whose stories and histories are prioritized and why.

In this online exhibition, you can explore our efforts to deeply question the Museum’s collection and our own past complicity in favoring colonial voices. In the Museum gallery, which will open in early 2021, you’ll be able to experience the changes we’re making to the physical space to highlight a more honest version of European and American history.

By challenging our own practice, and continuing to add to what we know and what we write about the works we display, UMMA tells a more complex and more complete story of this nation - one that unsettles, and fails to settle for, simple narratives.

“Invisible things are not necessarily ‘not there’.... Certain absences are so stressed, so ornate, so planned, they call attention to themselves; arrest us with intentionality and purpose, like neighborhoods that are defined by the population held away from them.”

— Toni Morrison

Lead support for Unsettling Histories: Legacies of Slavery and Colonialism is provided by the University of Michigan Office of the Provost, the U-M Arts Initiative, and the Susan and Richard Gutow Endowed Fund.

Exhibition:Michelle Hinojosa: Logcabins
2024-10-12 11:02 - 17:00 | Off Campus Location
Stamps Gallery commissioned Michelle Hinojosa (MFA, 2023) to reimagine the pillars on Division Street that flank the Gallery. Hinojosa has created log cabin quilts to adorn the columns in front of Stamps Gallery. The log cabin quilts traditionally represent the warm hearth at the center of a home. This installation reflects on the interplay between home, placemaking, labor, and intergenerational memories of migration. Rather than quilting cotton designed to softly embrace the body, these quilts are sewn from outdoor grade, UV-resistant polyester. The quilt is an ode to Hinojosa’s grandmother who illegally crossed the US/Mexico border holding her babies and her quilts. As she and her family drove across the United States to work in the fields of the Salinas Valley, the quilts offered a safe space for her and her family. Hinojosa celebrates their resilience to her grandmother and elders while also drawing attention to precarity and violence experienced by refugees and migrants crossing the US-Mexico border in our present today.
Artist’s bio:
Michelle Inez Hinojosa is an artist, educator, and researcher whose work is informed by Indigenous and Latine/x/a/o studies. Born and raised in Texas, she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in both drawing and painting and art education with a minor in art history at the University of North Texas. She holds a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. She works with quilting, bead weaving, embroidery, jewelry, transparent film installations, painting, ceramics, and sculpture to honor and explore the history of migration in her family and humanize the current discourse around migration still occurring at the southern border. Alongside her artwork she maintains a writing practice to re-story, re-make, and re-claim the often subordinated narratives of Latinx, Chicanx, Mexican, and Texican peoples.

Recently, Hinojosa was named an inaugural Creative Careers Artist in Residence at the University of Michigan, she has also attended residencies at Mildred's Lane (Pennsylvania), Anderson Ranch Art Center (Aspen, CO) and The Cedars Union (Dallas, TX).
