Artist Gina Adams will present a lecture, “The Object and the Shadow of Other People’s Stories,” at the Southern Utah Museum of Art Thursday, Sept. 7 at 7 p.m. for the Southern Utah University art department’s Art Insights series. Adams will discuss art and heritage and talk about her Native American culture-based artwork. Art Insights is free and open to the public.
Adams is known for the reuse of antique quilts featuring the words of broken treaties between the United States and Native American tribes. However, her works span a wide range of artistic styles and media including sculpture, ceramics, painting, printmaking, and drawing.
“Gina is an elegant and graceful educator and artist, she chooses media that best serves her idea,” said Russell Wrankle, an assistant professor of 3D, sculpture, and foundations at SUU. “I also felt that her perspective and point of view as a Native American Artist is needed in our community.”
Adams is a descendant of both indigenous and colonial Americans. She says that art has become a way to pass down memories and keep her genetic heritage alive and that through visual storytelling, viewers gain a better understanding of who her ancestors were and how all of us are similar to them.
“The process of making gives her an identity and an ancestral connection,” Adams said. “In this I feel that I have been creating work that re-contextualizes the sense of the sacred and the ritual object.”
Her work is exhibited throughout the U.S. and resides in many public and private collections. In 2015, the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art launched her art career with “Its Honor Is Here Pledged” and “Broken Treaty” quilts. In 2016, she was SARF Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow and had “Its Honor Is Hereby Pledged” exhibitions at Naropa University’s White Cube Gallery where she is a faculty member. In the summer of 2017, Adams presented and exhibited at the AIW Conference at Goldsmiths College at the University of London.
Adams has a bachelor’s degree from the Maine College of Art and a master’s degree from the University of Kansas where she focused on visual art, curatorial practice, and critical theory.
Art Insights is hosted during the fall and spring semesters by SUU art faculty. Students and community members meet to experience presentations and discussions by visiting artists and art educators from around the nation who share their work and insights. More information is available at suu.edu/pva.
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