by Carmen Ruiz Fernandez
“Coyote and the Monsters Yet to Slay,” now taking place from Oct. 16 to Nov. 22 in the Goudi’ni Gallery, showcases the latest collection by Pacific Northwest Native American artist Ryan Elizabeth Feddersen. Located on the bottom floor of the Behavioral & Social Sciences Building, the exhibition invites viewers to explore how ancient Coyote stories confront the monsters of today’s world.
This series of artworks addresses contemporary social issues through the lens of the Plateau lore, a group of Native American tribes from the non-coastal regions of the Northwestern U.S., Canada and parts of British Columbia. The main plot of the stories unfolds on the day that the animal people received their final names, and Spirit Chief appointed Coyote chief of all the tribes. Spirit Chief warned him about human-devouring monsters and tasked him with stopping them from killing all the people. Because Coyote’s mission was dangerous, he was granted special powers to transform, to be revived from death and to call on his excrement for advice. In this project, Feddersen embodies social problems as monsters themed around modern issues like wealth, hoarding, greed, relentlessness and killing, inviting viewers to name and symbolically slay them.
The collection consists of ten pieces: two main paintings titled “Coyote and Corporate Convenience” and “Coyote and the wormhole,” four smaller framed serigraphs, a large rack displaying small hand-painted gouache serigraphs titled “Coyote tries again” and three painted glass vessels.
According to the gallery director, Brittany Britton, she already had an idea of the kind of artist she wanted to feature when planning this exhibition. The main goal of the gallery is to showcase the work of local Native American artists, while also bringing Native artists from other regions to encourage cultural exchange. Britton said this diversity benefits art students, Native American students and others across campus. She specifically wanted someone from the Pacific Northwest to exhibit this time, since it had been a while since the gallery featured an artist from that area. Britton came across Fedderson online and remembered meeting her in person during a show at the Portland Art museum and knew she would be the perfect fit for this exhibition.
“Our main goal is to showcase local Native artists, but we also have a focus of bringing artists from other tribes to our area, so that we do have more of a cross-cultural exchange,” Britton said. “[Fedderson’s] work really fits in line with the mission of the gallery, as well as thinking about the ways that art impacts political systems and how we think about the world.”
Feddersen said the main message she wanted people to take away from this collection is that, like Coyote, humanity must always try again in everything it does. Especially if humankind is working towards living in a better world, failure is inevitable. She mentioned that her most meaningful piece of the exhibition is the painting “Coyote and Corporate convenience,” which depicts people being smothered by an ominous black cloud, raising their hands with money towards a monster above them that consumes all of the profit, while offering them corporatized conveniences in exchange. She explained that she thinks about this painting often, as it carries a profound message about how much convenience costs us as a society, coming at the expense of the planet and air quality.
The painting also stands out among the others because, on the black clouds, people can use their body heat to unveil secret icons related to collateral damage underneath.
“It’s a way of showing something that is hidden,” Feddersen said. “When you create an action in order to reveal things that are hidden, people are going to put in the effort to reveal those messages. It’s a parallel with life, it can be brought to other aspects of the world. People hide things from us, so this teaches us to go for the things that are hidden for us, to keep searching.”
Tristan Brown, a first-year transfer majoring in studio arts, came to the exhibit for a class assignment. Once there, he found the pieces had profound meaning, making him reflect on how trapped modern society can be by corporations and responsibilities.
“I think this collection shows a lot about a lost cultural identity,” Brown said. “It’s kind of a blend between Indigenous culture, modern society and some of the things we’ve lost as a civilization.”
Carmen is a freshman journalism major whose passion is to write stories for newspapers. She is a writer and photographer, and likes to read and take walks through the forest in her free time. She can be reached at cr433@humboldt.edu
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