fashion STATEMENT: Native Artists Against Pebble Mine is a traveling exhibit of wearable art that highlights a rural Alaskan community's opposition to foreign mining investors attempting to build North America's largest open pit mine at the headwaters of their fragile salmon spawning grounds.
Native Alaskan fisherwoman and artist Anna Hoover curated the exhibit as her Master's Degree project for the University of Washington.
The show, comprised of artwork created by internationally celebrated Native artists reproduced on t-shirts and limited edition prints, will be exhibited and made available online for purchase to raise awareness for this movement.
In August the exhibit premiered at the International Gallery in Anchorage, and on November 3rd, it opened at the Burke Museum in Seattle. It will continue to travel to a series of venues around the US, Canada and New Zealand.
The Natural Resources Defense Council has stated, “If the Pebble Mine is allowed to go forward, it will inflict irreversible damage on Bristol Bay -- including the permanent destruction of sixty miles of salmon habitat.”
The show features designs by esteemed Native artists such as Joe David, James Luna and Larry McNeil, all of whom have asserted the centuries long relationships that Native peoples have created with their environments, through Native art activism.
To view and purchase the T-shirts designed by the artists in the show, visit: www.nativeartistsagainstpebblemine.com
Click here to listen to an interview with Anna Hoover.