Notions, Avis Charley, 2022
Notions, Avis Charley, 2022
Avis Charley
Notions, 2022
Serigraph, Ed. of 62
22 x 30 in.
Notions is a work about accepting displacement as a Dakota/ Navajo woman born and raised in Los Angeles. The artist's parents relocated to LA from their reservations in the early 1970s to create a better life. Eventually, tragedy would encompass both parents, and she is left to wonder, where is home? Avis has lived in her ancestral homelands of North Dakota and New Mexico yet remains connected to all three places through their scents, sounds, landscapes, and temperatures. This print is about childhood and genetic memories, adapting, and accepting that home is not within four walls. Peace is home.
Avis Charley (Spirit Lake Dakota/ Diné) is a visual artist born and raised in Los Angeles, California. She is a ledger artist and painter who creates figurative drawings and paintings exploring the evolving Native American identity from the pre-reservation period to the present day, from ancestral homelands to city life. Ledger art was Charley’s first art form; learning the art from Terrence Guardipee (Blackfeet). She uses ledger art to bring a woman’s perspective into a male-dominated art form, sharing stories about parenting, family, and community. Charley started portraying Indigenous women in modern settings through portrait oil paintings celebrating resistance to assimilation and colonization with vibrant hues and details not possible in her ledger pieces. She creates work for future generations as she documents contemporary stories and experiences. She earned her BFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico (2018).