TRACES AND WOUNDS
This work presents three numbers: 1492, 574 and 6956.
1st - the year a wave of invasions into the Americas began.
2nd - the number of federally recognized tribal nations in the United States.
3rd - the average reported number of Native American women sexually assaulted each year in the United States, from data collected over a twelve year period.
Three panels with knotted cord abstractions of the Inka khipu, designate those significant numbers. In a khipu the knots represent numbers, an amount, a sum. Unknotted strands and spaces indicate no number, zero.
These knots are the wounds.
Shadows of the loose cords, viewed from the front, are the traces.
On the back, the pull through of the cords create chaotic “loose ends”, reflecting the attitude of the U.S. government toward Indigenous people.
Unknotted strands symbolize the number of sexual assaults on Native American women that are not reported, not counted. Nationally, it’s estimated, that only 16% of sexual assault are ever reported. For Native women, I believe the percentage of unreported assaults is even greater.
We can’t know this number for sure – as we can’t know history directly, knowing only the effects, seeing only the traces and wounds . . .
Traces and Wounds, installation, 2022, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center
“History is not something we can know directly; it is available to the scholar only as a combination of traces or wounds. It can be apprehended only through its effects.”
~ Frederic Jameson, The Political Unconscious: Narrative as Socially Symbolic Act