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Connecting past and present, Ah’-Wah-Nee celebrates female, indigenous artists

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“A Question of Balance” by Roxanne Swentzell
Photo: Christopher DeVargas

Traditionally, the Southern Paiute people have foraged the landscape for raw materials, turning reeds and grasses into beautifully woven baskets. Today, Las Vegas Paiute tribal member Fawn Douglas uses the same time-honored techniques to produce an innovative result.

She wove a basket from electrical conduit cable and a flourish of bright yellow-and-red electrical wire, having found the materials abandoned in a pile during the renovation of her NuWu Art + Activism Studios at 1335 S. Maryland Parkway.

“I could say that it’s a traditional Southern Paiute basket, because I was using my foraging practices, searching in my environment to harvest those things,” says the artist, activist and curator, who also works as the cultural engagement specialist for Meow Wolf.

"Nuwuvi: Our Bodies Our Lands" by Fawn Douglas

The finished product—woven around a framework of willow harvested from Clark County Wetlands Park—is a shiny hybrid of past and future, tradition and technology. It’s the perfect exemplar of Ah’-Wah-Nee, a new show at UNLV’s Donna Beam Gallery, which Douglas also curated.

Years in the making, Ah’-Wah-Nee is a dream realized for Douglas, who is finishing her MFA in Fine Art at UNLV. The show features all female, indigenous artists. Some of the invited artists are leaders in the field (Natani Notah, Roxanne Swentzell and Melissa Melero-Moose), while others are Douglas’ peers, up-and-coming artists like recent UNLV MFA graduate Noelle Garcia.

They all share a certain talent and vibrancy. “These are all women I’ve looked up to or do look up to, women who have inspired me and who continue to inspire me. Women I want to be like,” Douglas says.

“The significance of this project cannot be overstated,” Jerry Schefcik, UNLV’s director of galleries, says in a press statement. “The Donna Beam Gallery is elated to present the work of these remarkable Native American women artists.”

To find the best title for her exhibition, Douglas dug through the archives at UNLV’s Special Collections Library for Southern Paiute words. When she saw “ah’-wah-nee,” the word for “balance,” she knew she’d found the key to her show. “I was like, ‘That is really beautiful,’” Douglas says.

For her, the word “ah’-wah’nee” highlighted the many ways indigenous women artists must navigate competing roles: artist vs. mother; teacher vs. student; new methods and materials vs traditional ones.

Ultimately, Douglas invited the participating artists to answer these questions for themselves in the art they would display: “How do we balance, as women, living in two worlds?” “What does ah’-wah’nee mean to you?”

The answers came not as facile essay responses but as art, some chosen among an artist’s existing work and others newly made. The astounding result comprises 26 pieces by 11 living artists.

The pieces span many methods, including painting, sculpture, photography, ceramics, textiles and intricate beadwork. Some are abstract, others representational. But they are all an unflinching assertion of identity, a proverbial stake in the ground saying, Yes, my perspective matters. Here is my world, one of struggle, importance and beauty.

“There’s moments where I just stop and admire—like, wow, this is happening,” Douglas says. “It just felt so good to be completely surrounded by my people, and our expressions and stories, here in the same space. I’m surrounded by all these incredible artists … and all these different pieces are speaking to each other in different ways.”

As for what she hopes viewers take away from Ah’-Wah-Nee, that’s where the activist in Douglas really emerges. “I would like people to walk into this gallery space and see that we’re still here,” Douglas says, offering a direct rebuke to the myth of Native Americans being lost to history. “There is more to us than meets the eye. There’s different levels of our artistry. There’s ways we keep our traditions and ways that we’re moving into the future. I want people to come in here and see the example of indigenous futurism.”

AH’-WAH-NEE Through December 10; Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m.; free. UNLV’s Donna Beam Gallery, 702-895-3893, unlv.edu/donnabeamgallery.

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