Wendy Red Star and Kaj-anne Pepper: Alterations

Exhibition Dates: October 5 - November 11, 2016

Linfield Gallery is pleased to present a new exhibition of recent work by Wendy Red Star and Kaj-anne Pepper. Through textiles, video, performance and installation, the exhibition explores how identity is performed.

While formally and stylistically very different, the work of Wendy Red Star and Kaj-anne Pepper each address the ways in which costume and ritual can create, reinforce, or subvert cultural identity. Red Star’s costumes are inspired by traditional Crow men’s “hot dance” outfits, but are re-imagined as women’s fashion.

Pepper’s ‘Double Yes’ video installation features the performance of a commitment made by the artist to practice vocalizing and calling out YES repeatedly for ten minutes without stopping. The work, which nods towards Bruce Nauman's obsession with the inherent problems with language, interrogates the affect/effect conflict of yes on the body.

Shown together for the first time, these two artists each illuminate different aspects of how cultural identity is performed, in ways both large and small, intentionally and unintentionally, for better and for worse.

This exhibition is sponsored by the Lacroute Art Series and the Department of Art and Visual Culture. The Lacroute Arts Series at Linfield College is made possible by the generosity of Ronni Lacroute, Linfield College trustee and arts benefactor. The series, sponsored by the Lacroute Arts Fund at Linfield College, is dedicated to helping the college present art events and activities for the campus and community. It provides programs featuring artists in the areas of music, art and visual culture, and theatre and communication arts.

Additional support comes from the Yamhill County Cultural Coalition, which includes funding from the Oregon Cultural Trust and the Oregon Community Foundation.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Wendy Red Star works across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society. Raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation in Montana, Red Star’s work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance. An avid researcher of archives and historical narratives, Red Star seeks to incorporate and recast her research, offering new and unexpected perspectives in work that is at once inquisitive, witty and unsettling. Intergenerational collaborative work is integral to her practice, along with creating a forum for the expression of Native women’s voices in contemporary art.

Red Star has exhibited in the United States and abroad at venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fondation Cartier pour l’ Art Contemporain, Domaine de Kerguéhennec, Portland Art Museum, Hood Art Museum, St. Louis Art Museum, and the Minneapolis Institute of Art, among others. She served as visiting lecturer at institutions including Yale University, the Figge Art Museum, the Banff Centre, National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, Dartmouth College, CalArts, Flagler College, Fairhaven College, and I.D.E.A. Space in Colorado Springs. In 2015, Red Star was awarded an Emerging Artist Grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. In 2016, she participated in Contemporary Native Photographers and the Edward Curtis Legacy at the Portland Art Museum, and recently mounted a solo exhibition as part of the museum’s APEX series. Red Star holds a BFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, and an MFA in sculpture from University of California, Los Angeles. She lives and works in Portland, Oregon.

Kaj-anne Pepper is a Portland-based performance and theatre artist, educator and choreographer. The artist’s drag persona, ‘Pepper Pepper,’ is a humorous and thoughtful gender bending MC and entertainer. Together they explore vulnerability, artifice and identity while turning tragic into magic and trauma into drama.

For over a decade Pepper has been a fixture in the PDX nightlife and performance community. S/he was a member of the “gender terrorist drag troupe” Sissyboy and has toured across the US with drag band The Genderfluids. S/he currently MC’s Dark Night of the Soul (an evening of stand-up tragedy) and Critical Mascara “A Post-Realness Drag Extravaganza” occurring annually at PICA’s T:BA festival.

Additionally, Pepper has also continued a pursuit in contemporary dance, performing with Linda Austin, Tahni Holt, and Mizu Desierto. S/he has premiered new work at festivals, nightclubs and alternative venues including RISK/REWARD, DANCE+, Performance Works Northwest, The Headwater’s Theatre, Austin International Drag Festival, PICA’s T:BA festival and internationally at OFF! Biennale Budapest.