Each/ Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger is on view at the Denver Art Museum May 23–August 22, 2021. In the above video, watch Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger at work on their monumental sculpture also called "Each/Other" and learn about their collaborative process. Following its presentation at the DAM, Each/Other will travel to the Michael C. Carlos Museum at Emory University Sept. 25, 2021 through Dec. 12, 2021 and to the Peabody Essex Museum Jan. 29, 2022 through May 8, 2022.
Each/Other: Marie Watt & Cannupa Hanska Luger. Monumental she-wolf soft sculpture made with a collapsable steel armature base, ceramic eyes and repurposed fabric undercoat of the pelt adorned with over 800 embroidered bandanas sourced from communities across the world. Photo by Kevin McConnell at Camp Colton, OR, 2021
Can acts of creative collaboration help heal broken bonds with the environment and with each other?
Artists Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt invite the public to consider such questions while contributing to the physical manifestation of a large-scale sculptural installation. Through national and international participation, the artwork will become a temporary monument to collective relationship and collaborative handwork, bringing audiences into a tactile encounter with critically relevant issues of protection, shelter, reciprocity, sustenance, exchange, power, action, stewardship, wildness, kinship, vulnerability, and ferocity.
Artists Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger want people to think of art as a verb rather than a noun. They are challenging artistic and institutional norms by inspiring communal practices that value the creative experience and process over the final product, showing us how art is the act of creation itself. Their collaborative exhibition will show at the Denver Art Museum, spring 2021, where 24 mixed media sculptures and large-scale works will be on display.
Marie Watt is a member of the Seneca Nation and works in textiles at the intersection of community, history and storytelling. Cannupa Hanska Luger is of the Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota people and grew up on the Standing Rock Reservation. He works in a variety of mediums including fiber, ceramics and repurposed materials that narrate stories of Indigenous resilience.
Luger and Watt invited communities from across the globe to participate in their open call to design and embroider bandanas for this project. You can read more about this project, the artists and the exhibition here and here.
Contributors to this community based sculpture participated by designing and embroidering their own bandana that reflects personal experience and cultural background. The bandana as material was chosen by the artists to represent protection and resilience, referring to the ongoing social unrest in our communities. The artists are now in the process of creating a sculpture using the hundreds of submissions, bringing together communities and lead to greater understanding between people.
With the National and International participation, the resulting artwork will become a temporary monument to collective relationship and collaborative handwork, bringing audiences into a tactile encounter with critically relevant issues of protection, shelter, reciprocity, sustenance, exchange, power, action, stewardship, wildness, kinship, vulnerability, and ferocity. The final piece will be an approx 16' by 9 1/2' tall steel fabricated, collapsable tent like she-wolf form, the stitched bandanas interpreting its hide.
This monumental artwork is being created as the anchoring piece for the exhibition Each/ Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, curated by John P. Lukavic, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Native Arts at the Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO. This artwork is created in partnership with Stelo (formerly c3:initiative), through their c3:core residency program, which Cannupa Hanska Luger and Marie Watt are awardees of and who have graciously facilitated the fabrication of the sculpture at Camp Colton, Colton, OR; and fabrication support by Portland Garment Factory, a woman-owned and environmentally conscious garment studio in Portland, OR.
Along with the hundreds of participants who contributed to this work, Luger and Watt invited the Plymouth, UK community to contribute through the STTLMNT project:
Each/Other sewing circles were held in Plymouth, UK and hosted online by Melinda Schwakhofer, an American artist and citizen of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation with Austrian-American ancestry, who now lives and works on Dartmoor in the UK. Co-hosting was Karen Evans, lead artist for Plymouth-based The Conscious Sisters who is producing the UK engagement programme for Settlement.
This call to participate is now closed. Thank you to all who have contributed, the artwork will premiere for Each/ Other: Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger exhibition tour beginning at Denver Art Museum, Denver, Co May 23, 2021
Artists Marie Watt & Cannupa Hanska Luger with the steel fabricated hip form of the monumental she-wolf sculpture in progress. Camp Colton, Colton, OR, 2020