Contemporary Native American Series

Sydney Jane Brooke Campbell Maybrier Pursel specializes in socially engaged, activist, performance, video and new media arts. As a member of the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska with strong Irish Catholic roots, she investigates personal identity and contemporary Indigenous issues through art. Some of Sydney’s projects are used to educate others about food politics, assimilation, language loss, appropriation, and history in addition to projects amongst her own community focusing on language acquisition, culture and art.

Brenda Mallory’s (Cherokee Nation) work ranges from individual wall-hangings and sculptures to large-scale installations. She works with mixed media, creating multiple forms that are joined with crude hardware or mechanical devices in ways that imply tenuous connections and aberrations. She is interested in ideas of interference and disruption of long-established systems in nature and human cultures. Mallory grew up in Oklahoma and currently lives in Portland, Oregon.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.