Line(s), 2025
Images of my matriarchs, 35mm film, charcoal
25 8x10 images, 2 20x30 images
Line(s) is a photo series I made with my matriarchs last year. On this day, we drew charcoal lines on ourselves, and on each other, to honor our traditional female chin tattoos. Through colonization, through severance, our peoples have lost this tradition.
Line(s) comes from Line– singular, meaning just my lines. It communicates the isolation of Line, the charcoal lines I draw on my chin, and the isolation of reconnecting to Nativeness on my own. At the same time, it emphasizes the effort to reach out, to extend my Line to the women in my family. It allows them the possibility to see themselves with marked chins, and what reconnecting can be for them, too.
Navraaqtuq, 2025
Archived images of my grandmother Jane Trigg, paper with prose titled “navraaqtuq”, charcoal
navraaqtuq
is a game
kids play
back Home
the ice is thin
so it doesn’t take long
for a small hand
to reach
a glass bead
an ivory carving
a piece of our ancestor
these lost things are not sought
but found
this is a game
of reunion
where us kids
dig up the past
of course
my fingers
were not in that soil
when i found this
of course
our reunion, me and navraaqtuq
remains in a book
in the words of a stranger
telling all the stories
i do not know
of course
every lost thing
from Home
is another story
that is not mine
another story
i’m meant to live
a story i'm reminded
is not my own
when i flip my fingers through these pages
without the sweet burn of
ice
i am only called to
navraaqtuq, as my own
when the little girl
in all the pictures, i’ve found
looks at me
with the same, almost black, eyes
i know navraaqtuq, as my own
when the land behind her starts to sing
and she tells me
its time to come Home