Exhibition at Brown responds to University’s Haffenreffer Museum collection of Navajo objects

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] - In June 2023, as part of his material research for an exhibition at Brown University, Diné (Navajo) artist Eric-Paul Riege visited Brown's Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology to explore its Navajo collections. Among the objects he studied was a loom with an unfinished textile and a batten and comb still attached to it, as they would be for active weaving.

"Seeing that sample loom… while beautiful, broke my heart in some ways," explained Riege, who grew up in New Mexico on the border of Navajo lands. "Weaving tools are meant to be used and have a purpose. They act as a drum for the weaver. When you put an instrument in a drawer, it's in some ways in a coffin or a coma."

His cultural beliefs include the idea that a weaving should never go unfinished, and that leaving a weaving tool in a piece indefinitely is like burying it alive or abandoning it in the middle of a conversation, he said.

Now, as part of Riege's new exhibition at Brown Arts Institute's David Winton Bell Gallery, the loom exists in a more appropriate context - separated from the textile, and with notes about some of the ancestral concepts that inform Riege's work, hand-written in marker on the case in which it is displayed.

On view through Dec. 7, "ojo|-|ólǫ́" features large, soft sculptures and weavings that reference Diné mythology, the history of Euro-American trading posts in the Navajo Nation and the idea of "authenticity" as a value marker of Indigenous art and craft. The exhibition is free and open to the public.

"A lot of my work is this interplay of questioning and celebration," Riege said.

In the artist's largest solo presentation to date, the sculptures are on display alongside Haffenreffer Museum objects and those from Riege's personal collection.

"By playfully engaging objects now living within anthropological archives in his installations and performances, Eric-Paul Riege invites us to question museum collections and the commercial trade in 'authentic' native-made art and crafts," said David Winton Bell Gallery/Brown Arts Institute Associate Curator Thea Quiray Tagle.

Quiray Tagle co-curated the exhibition with Nina Bozicnik, senior curator at the Henry Art Gallery at the University of Washington. After the exhibition closes at Brown, it will be presented at the Henry Art Gallery from March through August 2026.

Riege selected five objects from the Haffenreffer Museum collection to displayin the exhibition, including silver necklaces and a leather, turquoise and silver concha belt.

"The fact that historic artifacts resonate for a contemporary artist is because these objects are still living and continue to have agency today," said Thierry Gentis, head curator of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, who met with Riege and Quiray Tagle as part of the artist's visit to Brown. "These artifacts that are now preserved in museums have much to say about cultural continuity and can act as agents of cultural revival, but only with the engagement and approvals of the descendants who made and used these objects."

Performance is also a significant part of Riege's artistic work, and he will activate the gallery with a performance during an opening celebration on Thursday, Sept. 18, and again during an artists' convening on Oct. 9 and 10.

"As a continuation of the sculptures, Riege's durational solo performances invite critical reflection about the relationship between agency and objecthood, and the visibility of Native cultures and peoples within the museums and dominant culture," Quiray Tagle said.

While developing the exhibition, Riege studied the patterns and construction of Navajo weavings in the Haffenreffer collection, as well as those held by the University of Washington's Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, to expand his weaving repertoire and to develop multimedia and sculptural works made of unexpected materials and with an exaggerated scale. He also studied textiles, dolls and jewelry created for the tourist market, as well as objects that blend Christian and Native symbology.

Riege, who holds a bachelor of fine arts in studio art and ecology from the University of New Mexico, said he views himself as a maker.

"[My craft has] allowed me to navigate the world in a slower, kinder way," he said. "I think of craft as allowing your hands to speak before your mind does - giving them the agency and intelligence that they deserve."

The Bell Gallery, 64 College St., Providence, R.I., is open to the public from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily; on Thursdays and Fridays, it is open until 8 p.m. Admission is free.