Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.

AS AN ACT OF DATA SOVEREIGNTY, ERICA LORD TRANSFORMS DISEASES AFFECTING INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES INTO INTRICATE BEADED ART.

CLEVELAND'S MAIN PUBLIC LIBRARY INVITES VISITORS TO TRANSFORM THE TRADITIONALLY SILENT SPACE WITH THEIR FAVORITE MUSIC.

GIRL SCOUT TROOP 914 MOBILIZES TO HONOR MARTHA HUGHES CANNON, UTAH'S FIRST FEMALE STATE SENATOR.

THE CODES WE CARRY >>Erica: I am originally from Alaska.

I was born there and grew up there until I was about six and then when my parents split up, I moved to Michigan.

And so even at a young age, I was very aware of my mixed background that I'm Alaskan Native, Athabaskan, and Inupiaq are my tribes and Finnish, Swedish, English, and Japanese.

And knowing that from a very early age, I was always curious about... about that division or that mixed background and all the stories of how that came together.

And so, I use multiple different mediums.

Like when I'm talking about the visual construction of race, it makes sense to use photographs.

And so, I have a series of different self-portraits wearing either different parts of me or things that people mistake me for.

When I'm talking about more abstract ideas or unseen things like DNA or biology, things like that I'll often turn to sculpture to use as sort of abstract metaphors.

And that's kind of where this most recent series of The Codes We Carry: Beads as DNA data came from.

>>Faith: What inspired the Codes We Carry project?

>>Erica: One of my friends that was a biologist, he's actually a microbiologist now, showed me these microarray tests years, years ago.

He explained to me that anything that affects your DNA or RNA and changes something in your body can be measured through these tests.

And depending on the colors and patterns will tell you whether or not you have a disease or how much or how advanced it is.

So, things like cancers or diabetes, anything like that can be measured by this.

And so that idea over those images kind of stayed in my head for a while.

I'll often go back to my historical objects and material culture from my tribe and I was doing research and looking at burden straps.

And they're often the most like heavily beaded and embellished things in our tribe because anything with children is something to be celebrated.

Whenever I look back at these traditional or historic objects, I try to think about how...how does this stay relevant to my life, my contemporary life now?

And so, I was thinking, well, I don't really carry babies around like what's my burden?

And the first thing that popped in my head was diabetes and other diseases that we're native people are susceptible to.

And so, I... that's finally kind of this like aha moment that happened.

The pattern comes from the different microarray tests for different diseases that affect native populations disproportionately.

Bead work is something I grew up learning, but this is a slightly different type of bead...

It's much more large scale.

>>Faith: Can you talk a little bit about the beaded dog blankets that you did?

>>Erica: So, I grew up dog sledding in Alaska.

And so, after doing a series of these belts, I wanted to try a new or different form that was still like relevant to the concept and culturally relevant.

Most of the material culture, historically, it's all related to survival like we were nomadic people, so all of our artwork is embedded into either, you know, our clothing or the dogs or things for survival.

The 1925 Serum Run is kind of the basis of why I chose to do dogs.

If anyone's ever seen Balto or Togo, those were two films that they made kind of about those two lead dogs.

So, in 1925, the village of Nome was dying of diphtheria, so they needed to get this antitoxin or serum out to the village.

So, like, I know that history like connects to my village.

The seven-dog team I thought you know we'd start with diphtheria because of that history there.

And then after that, I chose diseases that were kind of historically helped us lead to vaccines or historically important.

So, there's like smallpox, diabetes, ovarian cancer, tuberculosis.

I didn't even know tuberculosis wasn't common until I was an adult outside of Alaska because it's still rampant in Alaska.

And then the last two are covid.

So, they're kind of bringing us from history to now, to show these different diseases.

In my own struggle you know with healthcare struggles.

It was frustrating when the doctors wouldn't listen to me or just wouldn't recognize the things that I was dealing with.

And so, like something that is often preventable, like cervical cancer is one of those things like natives die of cervical cancer at a high rate, and that's not something that we need to die from.

It's often preventable or curable, except that we just don't have access to quality healthcare.

A lot of my art I make as a way to understand and reconcile with the world around me.

I mean, it's a lot of like what artists do in general.

We take these horrific or difficult things and we turn them beautiful as a way to make it easier to understand or...or respond to them.

And so kinda taking these...these things that still very much affect native people and it's difficult and there's no easy answer, but I think ultimately, it's important to be seen and heard when dealing with healthcare problems is the biggest...the biggest thing.

SILENCE TRANSFORMED Be sure to bring your cell phone to the Cleveland Public Main Library downtown and cue up your favorite song.

New York artist Jace Clayton designed an audio installation where people can play their music on 40 speakers arranged in a circle in the library's first floor gallery.

This piece to me, it's an invitation to gather.

And it's not just come look at my art, it's come bring your sound, something that's meaningful to you and share it with this space and enjoy this space and the architecture of it and the way the sounds are bouncing around.

So, I wanted it to be a kind of I wouldn't call it a meditative space, but a space of focused listening.

And there's and a reminder about so much of the way so much of the joy of being human revolves around music and sounds.

It's really amazing.

I'm listening to it now and it's spinning around me and it's going off into the distance.

It's coming back.

Apparently, you were playing stuff backwards.

It's like doing everything.

This is an example of artists opening up power structures to other people, says front artistic director Prem Krishnamurthy.

It's a pretty powerful gesture within a space like a library, which is public, but it's typically about silence.

It's typically about study to take that and say, Hey, now anybody can walk in here and make it their own space.

This work is just one of many showing up in public places, as well as museums in Cleveland, Akron, and Oberlin.

For the second edition of the Front Triennial, delayed for a year by the pandemic, a theme of healing runs throughout.

The idea of art as a mode of healing.

Form of therapy seems really so important to our community today and in fact, the world.

We've come off of two years of a world pandemic, a health crisis that we've never experienced before, and social unrest and social questioning, political turmoil that seems unprecedented.

And the entire show, which is contemporary art in all of its different forms from sculpture, painting, installations, video performance, music and more is focused on art as an agent of transformation, a form of healing and emotive therapy.

While this $5 million exhibition features artists from around the world, locally based creators are involved as well, including Cleveland sculptor Charmaine Spencer.

The title of the piece is Reconstruction.

I built this pretty soon after my mother passed away, and it is kind of rebuilding.

Using old wall lath, Spencer created a tall sculpture designed to allow light to filter through as it does between trees in a forest.

It did help the grieving process, and then it helped.

The kind of idea of ancestry in that light made me realize that I am still connected to my mother.

Like death doesn't actually dissolve the connection.

Her sculpture is a main focal point inside transformer station in Cleveland, which serves as the hub or launch spot for the entire exhibition.

We hope people will come here first to orient themselves as they then embark on a journey across northeast Ohio.

Another work on View at Transformer station is by artist Sarah Oppenheimer and Tony Cox.

They call for visitors to move and change their art.

As you rotate the two block beams, you shift the position of the projectors and these sort of screen like panels that move up and down in the space.

There's a kind of conflation and overlap and confusion of what affects what.

Where is it located?

And it means that when you as a visitor, come to the space and start to play with the work, the extent of your reach is in question.

How far is the thing that you affect and how close is the thing that you touch?

Organizers expect this exhibition will touch people in unique ways, perhaps even inspiring some to create themselves.

An exhibition is not an endpoint.

An exhibition or anything is just a waystation.

And so, we're going to see a really exciting exhibition for the next three months in Cleveland.

But I think its real effects are what comes after.

ALL ABOUT WOMEN >> Deidre Henderson: Learning about experiences that someone else has in the past really can help you deal with what you're experiencing in the future, you know, and, and, and in the moment.

Martha Hughes Cannon was the first woman, she wasn't the only woman in the legislature when she was there, she, she had, there were a couple of other women that were elected in the House at the time, but she was the only one in the Senate.

It was fascinating for me to learn about her story and learn about how she got her male colleagues to, to come along and to see things her way, see things a different way.

Her lived experience proved to be very valuable in the legislation that she passed, and she passed some monumental legislation that benefits us still to this day.

A few years ago, and it was, it was shortly before we did the vote on the statue in 2018, I had been to Washington, D.C. on a trip and I had been to the Library of Congress, the building there.

It was the first time I'd ever been into the Library of Congress.

And it's this beautiful building.

And there's, the reading room in there is this gorgeous room with statues everywhere.

And there were statues of men like Plato and Moses and, you know, all of these incredible people.

And then there were statues of women also.

But all the statues of women were allegorical women.

They weren't real women.

They were statues that meant something like history or law or justice.

And it really struck a nerve when I saw all of those women statues.

And I started looking around that building and then around Washington, D.C., to find signs of real women, not just allegorical women.

And they were hard to come by.

It was really hard to find them.

And that bothered me because we have real women in the past who have done incredible things and get no recognition or credit for it.

And I knew that needed to change.

So, having Martha Hughes Cannon be one of Utah's two representative statues in the U.S. Capitol Building is a big deal.

There aren't very many women statues in the Capitol building, and I love the fact that Utah has led.

In the past, we were one of the, one of the first few states to put women's suffrage in our state constitution, put an Equal Rights Amendment in our state constitution.

We were the first place where women voted under an equal suffrage law.

And having the first woman elected to a Utah Senate be in, in the entire country, and years and years before the 19th Amendment granted the right to vote for most Utah, or most American women, it's a really big deal.

Also, I was in the Senate and it meant a lot to me personally to champion this trailblazer who did so much good for the state of Utah and broke so many barriers for the rest of us.

Becky Edwards: So, I served in the Utah House of Representatives for ten years, and while I was serving, all of the women legislators knew who Martha Hughes Cannon was.

There's a, a, you know, a statue of her out behind the Capitol.

We all knew who she was.

And in fact, we had already formed something called the Martha Hughes Cannon Caucus, which is a group of women who have, were currently serving and anyone who had previously served in the state legislature.

And so, we were very well aware of her.

And when the ideas started to sort of rumble around about, wouldn't it be amazing if in honor of the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, if we could pass a law to place Martha Hughes Cannon's statue in Statuary Hall in Washington, D.C., that would be amazing.

And that started to kind of rumble around.

And I knew right then I needed to be involved in this.

One of the highlights of my service was giving tours to young people, especially of the Capitol, and telling them about the features of the Capitol building and what went on here and the legislative process.

And one day I had the privilege of giving a, a tour of the Capitol to Troop 914, who lived in my district, and they were interested and bright and had good questions.

And then at the end, the question came up, is there anything you're working on or anything this session that might be interesting that the girls could kind of get involved with?

Well, it just so happened there was.

There was this bill to move Martha Hughes Cannon's statue to Statuary Hall in D.C.

So, I mentioned that to them, and their eyes just opened up and they were ecstatic about the opportunity to work on that.

And it was perfect because here were young girls who would soon be young women, who would soon be women in our community, who would continue this legacy that they were already developing as engaged, interested, involved people.

And for them to have an opportunity to sort of like watch this bill shepherd through the process, I thought would be really interesting.

They didn't just watch the bill shepherd through.

They got involved.

Maya Mercer: We met with my representative, Becky Edwards, and we went on a tour and Becky told us about this bill that was supposed to send Martha to Washington, D.C. And I was immediately interested in it because I just wanted to be a part of making like, having like people learn about Martha.

And so, I did some research with my troop, and then we wrote letters and drew pictures and told other people about Martha and everything that she did.

And then we gave the letters to Mike Noel who was holding the bill in committee.

And then the next day he moved it out of committee, and I was there for the vote and I was ecstatic when it passed.

Becky Edwards: Once a bill passes, you forget that there is a lot of anxiety and nervousness like leading up to that final vote.

So, let me bring you to the day the vote passes.

A lot of people had been so impressed with what they called our secret weapon on the bill, which is basically this amazing group of young girls who were fourth graders at the time.

These were nine and ten-year old's who came up to the Capitol and did all the amazing things Maya was talking about.

So, we're day of the vote, which happens to be on February 14th.

It's the day that in 1870, the first woman anywhere in the modern nation voted in an election.

It was Seraph Young, February 14th, 1870.

So specifically, we wanted it to be on that day because it was kind of symbolic.

I present the bill and the votes start coming in and it takes a minute for all the people to vote.

And you can see all the names are on the board and if they vote yes, they turn green.

If they vote no, they turn red.

And you're watching it all happen.

And Troop 914 is up in the gallery holding hands and just watching this on a screen there.

And finally, when the votes all come in and we can see the bill passed, we were, as Maya said, ecstatic.

And as fourth grade girls are prone to do, they were screaming.

They were yelling.

We did it.

We did it.

And screaming with joy.

And we were all just incredibly proud of that moment.

That's very rare at the Capitol for an outburst, a noisy outburst, even though it was very well-deserved, in the gallery.

So, the speaker sort of looks up at this group of young girls up there knowing that this, these were our secret weapon girls.

And he sort of halfheartedly with the gavel is banging it down, "we will have order in the gallery."

But I love the phrase that they were cheering that day.

We did it.

And I think that was so true, first of all, and so symbolic of this collaborative effort of young people, old people, really creating a pathway to acknowledge the potential and the accomplishments of women in our state.

Was incredibly special.

>> Deidre Henderson: We need young people today, especially young girls today, to see their potential.

And they can see their potential often through other people's experiences, through other eyes.

I, that group of girls that day was so powerful to me.

There were, there were girls there who had written letters to their legislators who weren't supportive of the bill.

And to have those letters hand-delivered to a legislator to say, look, these girls are counting on you because this matters to them and read these letters, understand why this matters to these girls, to be able to see another woman in a high place and not just see her in a high place, but see her get the honor and the recognition and the praise that she deserves, have a place in history, especially in a town where a lot of the women who are there are allegorical women, not real women.

It was a really powerful moment.

And that picture of them holding hands and, you know, yelling for joy and, and just their, their expression, it, it says so much.

It embodied my own joy and my own experience there, but to see them do that, it made, it makes everything worth it when we think of the young people who benefit from the things that we do today.

Maya Mercer: It's important to me because I think that, like I've been able to see like all the things that I can do with my life and I don't have to be stuck doing one thing and I can make a difference.

Deidre Henderson: Well, I think one of the greatest things about Martha's legacy was she wasn't all about her.

She fought to get Utah women the right to vote, and she fought then to get American women the right to vote.

She fought for others.

And I think that's the most important lesson to learn.

I've tried to think about that in my roles, in my public roles, that this isn't about me.

This is about all women.

This is about everyone, and especially about the women who are coming behind me.

That's the important lesson that we learned from Martha.

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Funding for COLORES was provided in part by: Frederick Hammersley Fund, New Mexico PBS Great Southwestern Arts & Education Endowment Fund, and the Nellita E. Walker Fund for KNME-TV at the Albuquerque Community Foundation... ...New Mexico Arts, a division of the Department of Cultural Affairs, and by the National Endowment for the Arts... and Viewers Like You.