Woven: The Art of Contemporary Native Basketry
Brittany Britton / Hupa
I grew up on the Hoopa reservation within my dances and culture, and haven’t gone too far geographically from my home. It is only an 8-10 hour drive away from my current home, but at times feels as far away as the moon.
Although along the way on my path through higher education I’ve found the ties to my home and my self had grown stretched, not tenuous, just stretched a bit, like a tether between here and there. Or like a muscle that is tears itself a bit to grow to do new things. I found new ways of expressing myself, and investment in identity politics. I discovered threads and strands within myself I hadn’t seen before.
My work teases those strands, stretched out, into something I can gain some new knowledge from. I’m invested in looking deep into what it means to be indigenous, here in the now, and more specifically what it means to be Hupa with a cross section of other identities and modifiers. What it specifically means to be a queer native woman today. My work comes directly from inside those strands/ties, connecting my self to my home and there and back again.
- Brittany Britton, 2016
