NANCY RIVERA + DENAE SHANIDIIN / Facing Home
October 7, 2020 – January 22, 2021
Facing Home brings work by artists Nancy Rivera and Denae Shanidiin into dialogue, and considers notions of home, displacement, and memory as they relate to a multicultural identity. Through soft-sculpture installation and photography-based works, both artists reveal complex and malleable ideas of self that convey a desire to probe and preserve the cultural experiences that mold them.
Header image: Mexican (1999), American(2017), Nancy Rivera
Rivera, who was born in Mexico City and immigrated to the U.S. with her parents, draws from government-issued immigration documents, a small collection of family photos, and photographs taken during visits to her hometowns in central-Mexico to construct works that trace her experience as first-generation Mexican-American.
Shanidiin, born to the Diné Nation, shares an identity hungry for a sense of hózhó—balance and harmony—in a cruel world. Within Dinétah—her ancestral homeland—Shanidiin’s work offers personal identifiers of the softness and resilience she embodies. Both spiritually and materialistically, Shanidiin expresses her bond to motherhood that is shaped by her matriarchal identity while processing her displacement as an Indigenous asdzáán (woman).
The resulting exploration of family history, traditions, and nostalgia is personal – yet also reveals the parallels of the artists’ multicultural identity, transcending their individual experience.
About the Artists
Nancy Rivera is a Mexican-American visual artist and arts administrator based in Salt Lake City, Utah. In her photographic work she explores the fortuitous connections between real and artificial objects, and notions of authenticity, translation, and appropriation. Through her most recent work she reflects on her own history of migration. She has exhibited nationally in a variety of traditional and non-traditional venues. Her work is part of private and public collections such as the State of Utah Alice Merrill Horne Art Collection and the Utah Museum of Fine Arts. Visit her website at https://nancyerivera.com or follow her on Instagram @_nancy_rivera
Denae Shanidiin, Diné and Korean artist, is born to the Diné (Navajo) Nation. She is Honágháahnii, One-Walks-Around Clan, born to the Korean race on her father’s side. Kinłichíi’nii, the Red House People is her maternal grandfather’s clan and the Bilagáana, White People, is her paternal grandfather’s Clan.
Shanidiin’s work responds to her own identity as an Indigenous woman and artist. Her photography work reveals her Diné ancestry through intimate family portraits in urban settings and on her homeland. Shanidiin’s various projects reveal the importance of Indigenous spirituality and sovereignty. Her work brings awareness to many contemporary First Nation issues including Missing and Murdered Indigenous People. Follow her on Instagram @denaeshanidiin