Sara Siestreem, a leader in the Indigenous art renaissance, uses recurring motifs and unconventional materials to confront erasure and honor her heritage.
On the shore of the Coos River, halfway between Portland and Oregon’s southern border, oyster shells accumulate: a vestige of a now-extinct species. Sara Siestreem is the inheritor of these carapaces, embedding them into her art practice, which is not a job but a way of life. Baskets are also featured heavily in her work and represent a covenant between pragmatism and creativity, codified by the airtight weaving attractively designed to transport fish and mollusks from the waterway to the fire.
Violence in nature, the human species, and women’s bodies is the darker theme and acts as a net, catching and dragging Siestreem’s work forth for viewers who might not expect such edginess from a show titled milk and honey. The multidisciplinary artist synthesizes traditional and contemporary techniques and materials in her percussive work, including ceramics, natural wood planks, glass beads, and a paint palette of red, gold, white, brown, and green. Siestreem was recently featured at the Armory Show at NY’s Javits Center in September and had her first solo show at Cristin Tierney Gallery in New York City in September 2024.
Minion
Upstairs at Cristin Tierney, minion is the first ichorous piece in the show––topped by a slip-cast model of women’s dance caps, strands of red glass beads are discharged from its core toward the ground. Symbolizing women’s bodies, it’s also a chilling reminder of the brutal yet incentivized practice of scalping advertised to settlers by the United States government to quicken Native people’s removal from their homelands. Gut-wrenched, Siestreem has viscerally signaled to the audience what to expect from her weltanschauung, or worldview.
Glass bat, 2024
Siestreem’s artwork is progressively arranged in a circle around the room, composed of increasingly modern techniques. Shells and baskets repeat tautologically. But while oh but the keynote (ROSES) more clearly indicates her tribe’s history––turning around the annular display––skyline, a gold-lined row of white ceramic basketry (à la Anthropologie), feels like two techniques, one traditional and one modern, where the former has been subsumed into modern home decor. Temporality and the seeming inevitability of appropriation state their truth at once and oysters, baskets, and blood as recurring motifs abjure this erasure, implying the common yet resounding Indigenous adage “We are still here.”
Skyline, 2004
WHAT IS YOUR RELATIONSHIP TO NATIVE IDENTITY?
I am a Hanis Coos person, enrolled in the Confederated Tribes of Coos, Lower Umpqua, and Siuslaw Indians. My cultural heritage is my entry point, shapes my worldview, and dictates my way of being within humanity and on the planet.”
BETWEEN GEN X AND NOW, WE’VE LIVED THROUGH MULTIPLE INDIGENOUS ART RENAISSANCES, ONCE IN THE 1990S AND AGAIN IN THE PAST THREE OR FOUR YEARS. WHAT WAS THE FIRST THING THAT INSTIGATED YOUR INTEREST IN ART? WHO ARE YOUR CULTURAL INFLUENCES?
I grew up in studios and shops. My mother was a stained-glass artist. My grandfather and father both worked in wood, drawing, paint, and metal. I have an auntie who also worked in metal. My father and stepmother were architects. The arts were everywhere. I was a foregone conclusion.
My cultural influences include music, visual art, literature, fashion, food, and film. I am also deeply influenced by the natural world, my ancestors, my family, and my friends. I think about science, technology, politics, the solar system, the weather, love—all kinds—and the past and future through my work. I suppose everything plays, really.
HOW DO YOU LIKE TO WORK? DO YOU WORK IN THE MORNING, AFTERNOON, OR EVENING? DO YOU PREFER A QUIET OR LOUD ENVIRONMENT?
I have several modes of working. I weave at home, paint in my studio, work with the plants in my garden, the woods, and on the river and at the coast. Walking is part of it. There is social practice, so that is on Zoom and by phone, at coffee shops, classrooms, cultural centers, institutions of all sizes and shapes, the forest, or at the beach. I work just about every day, all day. I get up when my body is ready, deal with admin and writing, and then begin to make. I am a daylight painter and I am best in the morning. I try to quiet my nervous system at night. I prefer quiet environments for everything, although I usually listen to music while I am working—Cat Power, Karen Dalton, A + J Coltrane, Nina Simone, Bob Dylan, and Yasiin Bey.
Mint, 2017
WHO ARE YOUR ARTISTIC CONTEMPORARIES? WHO DO YOU WORK AND/OR COMPARE NOTES WITH?
I came up and still live in Portland, OR. I grew up a part of the outsider art, Gen X, punk, do-it-yourself movement and am still active in this arts ecology in a daily way. I am also deeply connected and active within the contemporary Indigenous art community, both on this landmass and around the world.
DO YOU HAVE MENTORS? IS THERE SOMEONE WHO HELPED YOU ALONG THE WAY WHO YOU BELIEVE FUNDAMENTALLY CHANGED YOUR CAREER PATH?
Lillian Pitt [Warm Springs, Wasco, Yakama] has been my mentor since 1999. Greg Archuleta [Grand Ronde] and Greg A. Robinson [Chinook Nation] are my weaving teachers.
WHERE DO YOU SEE YOURSELF IN FIVE YEARS? WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE NOTION OF CAREER GROWTH? WHAT’S YOUR SHOOT-FOR-THE-MOON GOAL?
I hope to be living on the land, building up a self-sustaining ecosystem for myself and my practice. I am dreaming of it as some sort of land trust that I can pass on to a future weaver and/or culture keeper. I want to be able to float from the studio, garden, and home in privacy and quiet while my artwork continues to go out into the world and the social consciousness of our times.
Images Courtesy Of Sara Siestreem And The Cristin Tierney Gallery
