Final Project

Resilience, string beads on pearl film photo paper, analogue photography, acrylic, red thread, 5x7 in frames, and 8x10 in frame, 2021. 

Artist Bio

Chataya Holy Singer is a Kainai Blackfoot interdisciplinary artist working with both traditional and contemporary mediums including photography, digital media, painting, drawing, performance, beading and sewing. Her work is based on identity, spirituality, language, and traditional knowledge by integrating her Indigenous worldview through a contemporary perspective.

Holy Singer is deeply passionate about her Blackfoot roots. Her practice weaves concepts of the past and present as a tool to preserve her culture for the future. Holy Singer achieves this through acts of resilience, decolonialization, revitalization, and reclaiming what has been taken away from her ancestors. She aims to "break the cycle" while navigating through a Eurocentric society with an Indigenous lens. Holy Singer strongly promotes education, encouraging the youth to continue bridging the gaps left by historical trauma. Her inspiration derives from her strength to carry on the traditional way of life, supported by her art, and surviving through blood memory.

Saaam (Medicine)

 

String beads, thread, and sinew on leather, 3” x 22” (including rope) 4” (without rope), 2021.

Artist Statement

 Chataya Holy Singer

My art practice is based on various mediums to convey my ideas using photography, digital media, painting, performance, and drawing. I also work with traditional Blackfoot practices such as beading and sewing. I identify myself as a Blackfoot interdisciplinary contemporary artist.

I embrace my roots, history and spirituality that embodies my work and motivates myself as an emerging local artist. I feel it is my purpose to re-learn, re-kindle and revitalize my culture to honor my ancestors. My intentions are to represent the land of where I come from which is the Kainai (Blood) Tribe, as a member of the Blackfoot Confederacy located within Treaty 7 territory. It is my passion to fulfill the knowledge that has been stripped and taken away from my predecessors. I achieve this by reintegrating their legacy into my practice while voicing my own story. My life goal is to pass on my knowledge to the younger generation, as I aim to inspire the youth to continue to go to school and to relearn their culture. As an artist, I will continue breaking the intergenerational trauma cycles that have broken down the Indigenous identity for many generations.

Saaam (Medicine), is the title of my project for the Niche Gallery Exhibition. I filled a medicine bag that I have beaded and sewn together, with traditional medicinal herbs. Inside there is sweetgrass (sipatsimo), sage (ka’ksimii), tobacco (pisstaahkaan), sweet pine (katoyis), and spruce (patokh’i). Sweetgrass represents prayer (Aatsimoyihkaan), the sage represents cleansing, tobacco represents offerings, sweet pine represents spirituality, and spruce represents healing. These traditional medicines are examples of how they have been used historically by the Blackfoot for their remedial properties. Saaam brings an understanding to how these practices are still actively used today, offering traditional knowledge as a way of life while promoting health awareness.

First Critique

 

Iiyiikitapiiyi - Be brave, fearless

Aatsimoyihkaan - Prayer

Waato'si - Be spiritually powerful

Isspomoowa - She ascended into the celestial realm

Naato - Consecrated, blessed, holy

Photopaper on canvas, fine sharpie ink, string beads, thread, 8" x 11"

Photoshop Digital Works

Double exposure experiment, photoshop digital media, 8.5" x 11" including border

Double exposure colored subjects with B&W background, photoshop digital media, 8.5" x 11" including border

Colored subject B&W background, photoshop digital media, 8.5" x 11" including border

Sepia, photoshop digital media, 8.5" x 11" including border

B&W double exposure, photoshop digital media, 8.5" x 11" including border