Introduction to Red Coral Stories
Welcome to Red Coral Stories! Red coral represents the connections forged between ancient worlds and still living communities, relationships between lands and waterways, where Mediterranean red coral is sacred to Navajo, Zuni, Hopi, and other Native people of the American Southwest. However, this exhibition is also about place-based relationships and global connectivity. While the curator is based out of the U.S. Southwest (Chumash lands in California, currently; Tiwa territory in New Mexico, previously), and some of the participating artists –even if not from the local Native nation-- likewise have past and current relationships to the lands and peoples of this part of the continent, so this project is open to forging connections with people across the globe. At this time, works that involve the so-called U.S. Southwest are prioritized, but this project has space to grow in dialogue with others. If Indigenous and outside of this region, please feel free to reach out and collaborate as well. In addition to an exhibition of creative works on the home page, this space is also open for guest contributors on this blog page for essays and sharing research and Indigenous or decolonial justice causes as they relate to the overall theme of the exhibition. I will also share pieces of my ongoing research as well as interviews and pieces on contributing artists as updates.
Red Coral Stories evokes a Red Ancient Mediterranean, in which adoption and adaptation of “classical” myth, imagery, and other forms of storytelling by Native Americans serves as a way of de-centering the classical (that is, a constructed “Greco-Roman”) antiquity as a form of white, “Western” heritage. By engaging with Native creatives’ uses of classical imagery, mythology, and other reference points, this exhibition challenges one-sided narratives of conquest against the dominance of Classical antiquity as emblematic of Eurocentric Western civilization in colonial settings. This digital exhibition shifts Ancient Greek/Roman/Mediterranean culture as a Western ancient heritage toward creating a borderlands space of cross-cultural exchanges, past and present. In undermining the assumptions that align classical antiquity with whiteness, able-bodiedness, gender binaries, and civilizational progress, this project works to advance more complex relationships with pasts and futures for Indigenous people. As a matter of addressing colonial injustice, this project is concerned with the colonial dispossession and restoring relationships between present and future Indigenous peoples with ancient pasts which are obscured with prevailing narratives, concerned largely with empires and civilizations, largely core to a “Western” history.
This is also about not merely rejecting Eurocentric antiquity, but re-evaluating Indigenous perceptions of it. Projects that are featured in this exhibition can include approaches to classical antiquity such as re-envisioning or re-writing mythologies; references to history, literature, or particular artworks; uses of symbols, styles, or materials cross-culturally (ex: Mediterranean red coral!); uses of Classical Latin and Greek versus Indigenous languages; statues, sculpture, monuments, and architecture re-imagined or dismantled; asserting Indigenous presence over classical motifs and narratives; reckonings with colonial theft, ancient and ongoing; antiquity in Indigenous futurisms; and engagement with feminist, queer, racial, and disabled perspectives. If you or any of your relations have missed the initial call for participation, please do not hesitate to reach out! Honorarium funds are limited, but still available as of this posting; however, I have goals to make this a longer-term sustainable project (further fundraising in the works), with potential to bring this out of virtual to physical gallery spaces, if there is enough interest. Any engagement here, if not direct participation, is welcome, so please share if you found this exhibition project worthwhile. Ahéhee’ (thank you)!
Thank you as well to the Society for Classical Studies for providing initial honorarium funds through its Ancient Worlds for Modern Communities grant program.
