Natalie Ball
Untitled, 2016
August 8 – October 31, 2016

Natalie Ball’s artwork Untitled, will use the garden as a space to hang a large-scale artwork that uses the imagery of doll houses to explore indigenous domesticity. The artwork also features dollhouse forms that are created from textiles from different households from her community living on the Klamath Tribes’ former reservation and ancestral homelands.

The artwork, explores and combines ideas of indigenous domesticity with history and cultural survival through an auto-ethnographic lens specific to Ball and her affiliated tribes, the Modoc and Klamath. This installation is not only a celebration of the artist’s culture and history but also stands as a microcosm for Native American resistance and existence, art and life.

Ball was born and raised in Portland, Oregon. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Ethnic Studies from the University of Oregon and she furthered her education in New Zealand at Massey University where she attained her Master’s degree in Maori Visual Arts. Ball is an indigenous artist who examines internal and external discourses that shape Indian identity through contemporary art.

In addition Porchlit has recorded a series of poetry readings to accompany the art installations. Click here to listen to Yonnas Getahun recite the poems etched and found on the stones of the garden from poets including Margie Piercy, Pablo Neruda, Margaret Atwood, Hildegard of Bingen and Annie Sexton.

The Poetry Garden Art Series is supported by the Office of Arts & Culture and Seattle Center. Image courtesy Elisheba Johnson.