COLORADO SPRINGS, CO.- The Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College presents the special exhibition Melanie Yazzie: Finding Oneself Again and Again, opening Aug. 24, 2019. The exhibition presents 36 new print art works selected from more than 300 works created last year by Boulder based artist Melanie Yazzie to show alongside a recent sculpture and two textiles by her grandmothers.

Yazzie’s earlier works call attention to the harsh realities of racism, poverty, and loss of home territories. While continuing to acknowledge these struggles, she now layers her artworks with recuperative images. Her art is informed by the Diné philosophy of hozho — translated as blessings, beauty, and harmony -- that aid in healing and balancing the negative effects of settler colonialism Indigenous people live with on a daily basis. “I remember my father, Albert Yazzie’s saying ‘Do it all in a good way, with good thoughts and a clear mind,’” says Yazzie.

For the first time, Yazzie will exhibit her artwork with family members, her grandmothers Nesbah Yazzie and Thelma Baldwin. FAC Curator of Southwest Art Polly Nordstrand has borrowed two weavings from the UC Boulder Anthropology Museum to exhibit alongside Yazzie’s works. “As I was working with Melanie on the exhibition, she shared a story about seeing her grandmothers’ weavings in a museum,” says Nordstrand. “So much of her work draws on memories of family that we just had to bring them together for this show.”

Selected for a 2018 Mellon Foundation Artist in Residence at the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center at Colorado College, Yazzie spent the summer months filling her studio walls with several series that she had planned to complete. She also spent time working with the museum’s collection, viewing hundreds of prints by John James Audubon and a diversity of work by Indigenous artists in the Southwest art collection.

From their archives, the FAC museum recovered printing plates from a 1939 book project about Diné healing practices that Yazzie began to incorporate into her compositions as fractional images with her own iconography formed from memories of people, places and pets. By repurposing the Diné visual images, she asserts the ongoing significance of Indigenous knowledge.

Colorado College Assistant Professor of English, Natanya Pulley remarks, “Equally delightful and earnest—just like her artwork, meeting and working with Melanie Yazzie brings marvelous possibilities into the world.” Pulley goes on to say, “She cultivates and supports environments in her creations and in her presence that are as devoted to thoughtful and informed grounding as they are to playful surprises and happy accidents. This balance of critical and joyful engagement inspires me and others to be open to what risk, courage, and the triumph of discovery can bring.”

Melanie Yazzie is of the Salt Water Clan born for the Bitter Water Clan. As a printmaker, painter, and sculptor, Yazzie works to serve as an agent of change by encouraging others to learn about social, cultural, and political phenomena that shape contemporary lives of Indigenous people in the United States and beyond. She is a professor of art practices and head of printmaking at University of Colorado Boulder. She often organizes collaborative projects with Indigenous artists in Aotearoa New Zealand, Siberia, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Japan. She has exhibited in over 200 group and solo exhibitions in North America, Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand, Finland, France, and Spain.

This thought-provoking exhibition will be on view Aug. 24, 2019 – Feb. 23, 2020, accompanied by a 20-minute film about the artist by aspiring filmmaker Faith Toledo of the Navajo Nation.