The foundation of this work is a quilt made by my adoptive white grandmother, Ruby Wright. She made it before my birth mother, brothers and I were connected to our biological family as a way of trying to uplift my Indigenous identity, but this tender gesture is still inflected by her whiteness—her use of the iconography of the tipi felt like a pan-indigenous stereotype, especially in hindsight as my Nation does not use tipis. Her use of the grid also brings to mind the reservation system, cordoning Indigenous people into allotments of land that are out of the way and controlled. I’ve always felt a sense of irony about this object, that it’s meant to bring comfort but does the opposite.
My intervention into the object is the addition of beaded text on the underside of the blanket that reads “ON THE OUTSIDE LOOKING IN,” lyrics borrowed from the Empress Of song “When I’m With Him”. These words encapsulate what it means to be in a third space, Indigenous but raised in a white family, I’ve felt on the outside of both spheres. The texts placement also disrupts the use of the blanket, perhaps bringing discomfort to whoever uses the quilt for it’s intended purpose, thus transferring the feeling from the maker to the user.
This work is hung from the ceiling with ribbons as a sort of partition. Curators are encouraged to find ways of installing the work that respond to the physical space of the gallery that further the notion of outside vs. inside, visible vs. not, etc.