Amnía (Echo)
Artist:
Wendy Red Star
(Apsáalooke (Crow), born 1981)
Date: 2021
Dimensions:
66 1/2 × 98 1/4 × 19 in. (168.9 × 249.6 × 48.3 cm)
Pedestals: 42 5/8 × 32 7/8 × 18 1/2 in. (108.3 × 83.5 × 47 cm)
Credit Line: San Antonio Museum of Art, purchased with The Brown Foundation Contemporary Art Acquisition Fund
Object number: 2022.7.a-c
Copyright: © Wendy Red Star
Provenance: the artist; (Sargent's Daughters, New York) purchased by San Antonio Museum of Art, 2022.
Published References
Emily Liebert and Nadiah Rivera Fellah, "Picturing Motherhood Now," New Haven: Yale University Press, 2021.
Label Text
The inspiration for Amnía (Echo) is an archival photograph Wendy Red Star discovered at the National Museum of the American Indian of her paternal great-great-grandmother, Her Dreams Are True. The picture was taken on the Crow Reservation in Montana circa 1898–1910 and recreated over a century later in the artist’s studio by Red Star and her daughter Beatrice. The portraits call attention to the Indigenous roots of feminism, a recurrent theme in Red Star’s practice, demonstrating the matrilineal structure of traditional Apsáalooke society. The successive imagery, reminiscent of DNA replication, calls into question the usage of blood quantum laws to determine tribal enrollment and legitimize Native American identity (an issue that affects the artist’s daughter). This tripart family portrait firmly establishes the three women’s presence and Crow lineage.
(Lana Meador, 2022)
(Lana Meador, 2022)
Not on view
In Collection(s)
The San Antonio Museum of Art is in the process of digitizing its permanent collection. This electronic record was created from historic documentation that does not necessarily reflect SAMA's complete or current knowledge about the object. Review and updating of such records is ongoing.
This resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the Human Endeavor.
