1st Peoples: Portraits from the First Light Artist Talk and Reception

Description

Join the Cape Ann Museum for an artist talk and reception with Matika Wilbur (Swinomish and Tulalip). Wilbur is the artist behind 1st Peoples: Portraits of Dawnland, a new exhibition of portraiture and interviews which offer authentic representation of contemporary Native people who reside in the area known today as New England.  

Pulling both from Wilbur’s project Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America and from a week-long residency at the Cape Ann Museum, this exhibition of photographs celebrates the diversity and resiliency of modern Indigenous identity and addresses the importance of honest representation. During her CAM residency in the spring of 2024, Wilbur traveled across Eastern Massachusetts to take new portraits of contemporary Native people from the region. 

Matika Wilbur is from the Swinomish and Tulalip Tribes. She is the founder and photographer of Project 562, a documentary project dedicated to changing the way we see Native America. After earning her BFA from Brooks Institute of Photography, Wilbur began her career in fashion and commercial photography in Los Angeles. She found herself turned off by the commercial world and thereafter decided to use photography as a tool for social justice. 

Project 562 is Wilbur’s fourth major creative project elevating Native American identity and culture. Her first project captured portraits of Coast Salish elders for “We Are One People” (2004, Seattle Art Museum, Seattle, Washington, and the Royal British Columbia Museum of Fine Arts, Victoria, British Columbia). She created “We Emerge,” which featured Native people in contemporary urban and traditional settings (2008, Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, Seattle, Washington), followed by “Save the Indian and Kill the Man,” which addressed the forced cultural assimilation of Natives from 1880 to 1980 (2012, Tacoma Art Museum, Tacoma, Washington). Since 2015, Wilbur has offered more than three hundred keynote speeches at institutions such as Harvard University, Yale University, University of California–Berkeley, Google, and the National Education Association, and she also has delivered several TED Talks. 

Wilbur is a National Geographic Explorer and recipient of the distinguished Leica Photo Award. She cohosts the popular Native issues podcast All My Relations with Dr. Adrienne Keene, which invites guests to explore the connections between land, creatural relatives, and one another. You can learn more about Matika at matikawilbur.com and find a copy of Matika Wilbur’s book Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America at the Museum Store or at our Online Store.