Ahanu Valdez. Photo: Rebekah Wise
$15 ($10 Members)
Creative Lab is a series of interdisciplinary workshops designed and led by Guild Hall’s Visiting, Exhibiting, and Resident artists. Each Creative Lab invites participants to learn about an artist’s practice through an open lecture and a participatory workshop.
This evening’s Lab is led by Shinnecock artist, Ahanu Valdez. Valdez is a mixed-media artist specializing in poetry, pottery, and watercolor painting. Her art is a beautiful blend of traditional and modern indigenous styles that bridge the gap between past and present.
The Lab will focus on Valdez’s practice, and the work she created as part of Ayim Kutoowonk, a Shinnecock Language revitalization collective, currently on view in the Guild Hall exhibition, First Literature Project.
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Ahanu Valdez
Ahanu Valdez is a mixed media artist specializing in poetry, pottery, and watercolor painting. A proud member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation in Southampton, NY, Valdez has lived her entire life on the Shinnecock territory. Her art is a beautiful blend of traditional and modern indigenous styles that bridge the gap between past and present. Valdez's work is a testament to the rich cultural heritage of her people, and her passion for her craft is evident in every piece she creates.
Photo: Rebekah Wise.
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Ayim Kutoowonk (She Speaks)
Ayim Kutoowonk (She Speaks) is a collective of three Indigenous Shinnecock Women, Cholena Boyd-Smith, Kaysha Haile, and Ahanu Valdez, working towards the reclamation and revitalization of the Shinnecock Language. Facilitated by Shinnecock Linguist, Wunetu Wequai Tarrant, and guest lecturers, Christina Tarrant, Conor McDonough Quinn, and Kaylene Big Knife, Ayim Kutoowonk works to bridge the divide between academic linguistics training and contemporary Indigenous culture, easing anxieties and building a language-learner focused pedagogy through multi-media projects and learning tools.
The collective was founded in Spring 2023 as part of Guild Hall’s Community Artist-in-Resident program, sponsored by the Library of Congress’s Connecting Communities Digital Initiative, part of the Library’s Mellon-funded program Of the People: Widening the Path.
Sponsors
Guild Hall’s Learning + New Works programs are made possible through The Patti Kenner Arts Education Fellowship, Vital Projects Fund, the Glickberg/Abrahams S. Kutler Foundation, Stephanie Joyce and Jim Vos, the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Endowment Fund, and The Melville Straus Family Endowment.
The exhibition First Literature Project is supported by The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation.
Guild Hall’s Community Artist-in-Residence Program and collaboration with Wunetu Wequai Tarrant, Christian Scheider, and the Padoquohan Medicine Lodge was made possible through support from CRNY’s Artist Employment Program. Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY), a project of the Tides Center, is a three-year, $125 million investment in the financial stability of New York State artists and the organizations that employ them.
Additional project support was provided by the Long Island Community Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and an anonymous donor.
The formation of Ayim Kutoowonk was made possible through the Library of Congress’s Connecting Communities Digital Initiative, part of the Library’s Mellon-funded program Of the People: Widening the Path. The program provides funds to projects that offer creative approaches to the Library’s digital collections and center Black, Indigenous, and Hispanic or Latino studies.
First Literature Project’s VR installation was developed by Khora, a leading Scandinavian virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) production studio, creating cutting-edge content within multiple application areas.