RYAN! Feddersen: Phantom Lands

Through interactivity, scale, and intimacy, Ryan Feddersen forms connections between U.S. history, her Okanogan heritage, and current events to ignite conversations on place, use of space, and our relationship to the environment.

This exhibition will feature recent works in a variety of scales and mediums that focus on resistance and resilience in the face of development, displacement, and destruction. Feddersen approaches these topics with an emphasis on humor, play, and creative engagement as a way to create opportunities for personal introspection and discovery.

RYAN! Feddersen, Confederated Tribes of the Colville (Okanogan /Arrow Lakes) was born and raised in Wenatchee, WA and follows in a long line of creative people. Feddersen received a Bachelor of Fine Arts at Cornish College of the Arts in 2009, graduating Magna Cum Laude. She remained in Seattle for approximately ten years working as an artist, studio assistant, and arts administrator, before relocating to Tacoma, WA, where she is now based with her husband and two cats. Feddersen was inspired to create interactive and temporary artworks as a way to honor an indigenous perspective on the relationship between artist and community. 

She first exhibited in Spokane in 2015 when commissioned by Spokane Arts to create an interactive temporary mural. That summer, she presented 900* Horses, a community enacted memorial that reframed a historic atrocity through a colorful series of community illustrated effigies. Feddersen has created large-scale interactive installations and site-specific pieces throughout the region,working with Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, Tacoma Art Museum, MoPOP (EMP), The Henry Gallery, Spokane Arts, and the Missoula Art Museum. She was recently named a 2018 National Fellow in Visual Arts with the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website