Finally after over 340 hours of weaving over a few months my Navajo landscape strips were complete and ready for the exhibition at the American Museum in Bath.
‘Erosion’
Jan Kinsman
Weaving: mixed media,
linen, cotton, silk, wool and steel.
1m x 2m
Inspired
by the many beautiful Navajo blankets and rugs at the museum, I have become
very interested with the history of the Navajo and their weaving.
I chose to depict the ‘Long Walk of the Navajos’ as a woven landscape in
three strips, to represent the hardship and loss of life they endured when, in
1863, they were forced from their sacred homeland in Arizona, to walk over 300
miles to the Bosque Redondo Reservation in New Mexico . Over 2,000 Navajo died
from ill treatment, exhaustion, disease and starvation during the walk and the
four years in which they were incarcerated on the Reservation.
Combining
Navajo weaving techniques with my investigations into the rusting of metal, the
strips of weave diminish in colour and texture to echo the gradual erosion of
the Navajo’s spirit and health. The rusting metal stands as a metaphor for
their diminishing strength.
