Bio
Erin Lee Antonak is a visual artist and curator. She is a Wolf Clan member of the Oneida Indian Nation of New York. A graduate of Bard College(Annandale-on-Hudson, NY) and SUNY New Paltz (New Paltz, NY), Erin has studied at Lacoste School of the Arts (Lacoste, France), Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT) and is a Morse College Fellow at Yale University (New Haven, CT).
Mixing Iroquois sensibilities and traditional craft techniques with contemporary materials and concepts, a dash of 1980/ 1990’s Northeast coast intertribal powwow culture and a heavy dose of 70’s sci-fi, Erin’s artwork paints a self-portrait of a modern Iroquois woman. Working in this way, she creates a link between herself, and her ancestors, claiming her place in the chain of Iroquois women before and after her.
While currently working as an independent curator based out of New Orleans, Erin has held head curatorial positions at both the Ohr-O’Keefe Museum of Art (Biloxi, MS), the Contemporary Arts Center (New Orleans, LA) and has been the Board Chair of the Indigenous Women’s Voices Summit (Hurleyville, NY). She has also developed and curated visual art shows in Europe, Asia, and North America.
Artist Statement
I am Wolf Clan, from the Oneida Indian Nation of New York. I often consider the things we pass down between generations. I grew up learning Iroquois crafts from my elders. I look at my hands when I am working using traditional techniques and consider how they are the result of women’s hands working in the same way over thousands of years. Working with corn and in this way, ties me to my lineage and creates a space for me to contemplate my humanness and connectedness to the past and the future. This work represents knowledge about life and healing sent through time from my ancestral mothers. I reflect on the lives of my matrilineal ancestors, who they were and the challenges they faced. It is comforting and empowering to know my own life is proof of their ability to persevere through extraordinarily difficult circumstances.
My artwork is a portrait of what it is to be a modern Iroquois woman and claims my place in the great chain of Iroquois women before and after me. I manipulate contemporary materials using ancient techniques and use traditional materials in contemporary ways. By doing this I am creating a link between myself and my ancestors. I explore issues of identity and trauma and pose individual and collective methods for self-healing, self-soothing, mourning and mitigating loneliness.
This body of work currently in process explores time travel and portals (mental, physical, or otherwise), openings to other worlds and other possibilities, wormholes for the past, present and future to communicate through. It is my intention in the next couple of years to use these works as part of a full walking procession with dozens of collaborators in an invented ceremony. Through this, I will attempt to leave messages for my younger, 20-something, self in the ground along the New Orleans streets I walked every day in the years before and after the life changing year of my mother’s stroke and Hurricane Katrina.