Gina Adams, Assimilation Machines

I have been creating chine collet prints this past year using the negative fabric cutouts from my body of work Broken Treaty Quilts. It has been an absolute joy to re-use this fabric and explore these pieces while recreating the separate parts into a new series of artist proof prints. In process I considered creating whimsical machines that decipher and dissolve assimilation practices. I imagine their moving along the earth, healing the pain for all indigenous peoples with forward momentum to heal the history here in the United States. I imagined the fabric transforming while working on chine collet printing...then drawing into each one so that these little machines have power to go out into the world and "clean it up" a little bit. Miigwetch/Thank you as making them has been a joyful experience.

I am fascinated by stories passed down, both from my own familiar heritage and those told by others. I believe that the passing down of memories what keeps our genetic heritage alive. I am interested in and seek out others who have a similar story to tell and I immerse myself in their shadows. I do so in order to tell my story more clearly, and doing so also helps to clarify what I want the work to say visually.

There is a connection to what the ancient ones taught my ancestors, as this information was passed down generation to generation. I consider my work and its process to be a spiritual endeavor, and the process of making to be a ritual component. I decided to learn how to make objects in order to have a better understanding of who my ancestors were and how perhaps I am similar to them. The process of making gives me an identity and an ancestral connection. In this I feel that I have been creating work that recontextualizes the sense of the sacred and the ritual object.

In storytelling I am moved by a sense of discovery and connection, and much of it is also deeply connected and rooted in place and land. My life's journey is about where the land, peoples, and stories come together. It is my wish that the viewer will bring their own experience when viewing my work. Thank you for taking the time for your own discovery as it brings meaning to the day. Miigwetch/Thank you.