Visceral: Verity Legacy Identity
Alaska Native Gut Knowledge and Perseverance
The Visceral Trilogy
A series of three interrelated Visceral exhibitions explore contemporary and historical Alaska Native issues, spotlighting gut as a conduit for Indigenous voices.
Visceral: Verity opens Friday, March 3, 2023 as the solo exhibition of contemporary artist Sonya Kelliher-Combs. Her mixed-media installations combine combines natural and synthetic materials and evoke questions of authentic experience, truth, abuse, transparency, and credibility. Sonya is one of only a few artists working with marine mammal gut.
Visceral: Legacy opens Friday, May 5 as a further interpretation of Sonya’s solo exhibition themes through objects that she and fellow gut enthusiast and Alaska State Museum conservator Ellen Carrlee chose from the museum’s permanent collection. As a guest curator, Sonya brings the richness of her childhood in Nome, her international career as an artist, her life in Anchorage, and her insights as a person of Iñupiaq, Athabascan, and European heritage.
Visceral: Identity, which also opens Friday May 5, features a selection of gut parkas from across Alaska to highlight the technical and historical aspects of this remarkable material in cross-cultural perspective. Ellen and Sonya explore the latest (analytical and social science) research examining this medium and why gut remains a significant material for key relationships in Alaska.
These three galleries will be open through the summer 2023 season, augmented by special workshops and lectures, and closing in mid-October 2023.
Visceral
- felt in or as if in the internal organs of the body
- characterized by or proceeding from instinct rather than intellect
- characterized by or dealing with coarse or base emotions
Verity
- the quality or state of being true or real
- something (such as a statement) that is true
- the quality or state of being truthful or honest
Legacy
- a gift by will especially of money or personal property
- something transmitted by or received from an ancestor or predecessor or from the past
Identity
- the condition of being oneself or itself, and not another
- condition or character as to whom a person or what a thing is: the qualities, beliefs, etc.
- the state or fact of remaining the same one or ones, as under varying aspects or conditions