Digital Retrospective: A Virtual Tour of Fall 2022’s “Indigenous Voices of the Carolinas,” Exhibition.
Video and Description by Astrid Bridgwood
During the Fall 2022 Semester, Co-Curators Dr. Siu Challons-Lipton of Queens University of Charlotte and Nancy Fields of UNC Pembroke (supported by Tyler Karpovich) collaborated to create “Indigenous Voices of the Carolinas,” an exhibit which featured art by and about Indigenous Peoples from the Lumbee, Eastern Band of Cherokee, Catawba, Coharie, and Haliwa-Saponi tribal nations. Photography, basketry, ceramics, and other media gave voice to the vibrant tribal nations whose origin stories, histories and lived experiences are a vital part of the Carolina landscape. A visitor’s interactions with various works from and about Indigenous Peoples was an interactive experience that both honored and provided education about Carolinas’ Indigenous Peoples rich history and culture.
The exhibition, which ran from September to December, was the first curatorial experience of Gallery Assistant Astrid Bridgwood, who was profiled by Queens University of Charlotte discussing her experience after the show’s opening. Before the show’s takedown, Bridgwood documented the show in the Bank of America and Lovener Galleries in the Sarah Belk Gambrell Center for the Arts & Civic Engagement in a virtual walk-through which serves as a digital retrospective for the exhibit, seen below.
The show sparked conversation surrounding the creation of a Land Acknowledgment Statement for Queens, addressing the First Nations peoples who populated the land the university presently occupies. The first draft of this Acknowledgment Statement was seen on the walls of this exhibit, drafted by Dr. Challons-Lipton and Nancy Fields. Presently, Queens has created a committee of Indigenous Peoples (both campus advocates and community members) who seek to create a completed Land Acknowledgment Statement, building on the framework established by this exhibition. It is important for the exhibition to be considered in combination with this initial Acknowledgment Statement, which is presented as follows:
Queens University of Charlotte campus sits on the ancient homelands and traditional territories of the Catawba, Cheraw, Sugeree, and Waxhaw peoples. We recognize, support, and advocate for Indigenous sovereignty in North Carolina and beyond, respecting our important connection to this land that we live, learn and work on.
Please use this digital tour as a space to explore the work of these Indigenous artists, and reflect upon our duty as contemporary American citizens to the honoring and acknowledgment of their lives not as facets of history, but as living, breathing communities of the modern United States.
Above, find a walk-through of the show’s first half, found in the Bank of America Gallery.
Above, find a walk-through of the show’s second half, found in the Loevner Gallery.