Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos) pearly gates

Sara Siestreem (Hanis Coos)'s Artist Project Space exhibition pearly gates includes painting installation, video, and woven baskets, and thematically considers access in terms of land, ancestry, resources, and human relationships. The artist makes visible the complex systems of engagement between ancestral objects and contemporary institutional practices. Siestreem’s work bridges education and institutional reform, and this project specifically focuses on the care for Indigenous works in museum collections as well as the structural systems that provide or omit access and appropriate context to the presentations of Indigenous fine art.

This exhibition is made possible by the University of Oregon, Center for Art Research (CFAR) and Curators-in-Residence, Tiffany Harker and Iris Williamson. Their 2021-22 program, titled HABITS OF DENIAL, features research, exhibitions, and public programs around the theme of “access.” Collaborating artists investigate specific issues within larger systems of power and their embedded exclusionary impacts. Four anchoring programs will examine access through lenses of language and communication, technology and economies, communities and archives, and Indigeneity and institutions. Residency and related programming are made possible by The Ford Family Foundation. 

Special thanks to the Museum of Natural and Cultural History at the University of Oregon and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University for their kind support of pearly gates.