Baring the Spirit (Body and Breath)

Walnut, cotton cord, serigraph, monoprint & gouache on paper

36”x50”, 2025

Cultural belongings are part of a larger, collective body that archives relationship between people and Land. The Haida náaxiin robe is a woven record of status and commemoration. It communicates the power of the ancestors before us who came, through generations, to know the wisdom of íitl’ tlagáa, our land. This Haida náaxiin robe does not bear a woven pattern, instead an x-ray of a child’s mouth reveals the overlapping nature of time, suggesting that moving into the future, through growth and change, necessitates loss. It is held inside and lashed to a loom, holding it in the perpetually incomplete process of making and becoming.

Teeth are necessary for clear speech; the mouth is the gateway of the human voice. It is an instrument through which histories are carried, identities are formed, and connections sustained. In voice, lies powers of expression at once defined by uniquely personal qualities and by cultural markers. Language, vocalics, song, and story are all forms of this identity that is specific and connected to Land, but like all that is living and imbued with spirit, subject to change. An x-ray highlights the presence of unseen realities and the future that exists within every given moment. The form of the robe asserts the enduring connection of spirit to the material offerings of Land and of people to one another through shared iconography.

The image invites ancestors to envelop the voices of future Haida people and protect them as they travel through human lives, as spirits who continually return and belong to the Haida.