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• 1 media/2022.6.1.jpeg media/Untitled design (3).jpg 2022-12-08T19:14:08+00:00 Our House Made of Spiderwebs - ‘Eyookin Wereechey by Mercedes Dorame 3 image_header 2022-12-08T22:02:25+00:00 Mercedes Dorame, born in Los Angeles, California, received her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her undergraduate degree from UCLA. She calls on her Tongva ancestry to engage the problematics of (in)visibility and ideas of cultural construction.
  
  
  "My work explores the construction of culture and ceremony as outcomes of the need to tie one’s existence to the land. My heritage as a member of the Tongva tribe in Los Angeles connects me deeply to the landscape of California. I am interested in the problematics of living in a place that once belonged to your ancestors, a place you feel connected to, yet have lost access to. Our tribe has no federal recognition, and therefore no reservation land and no gathering place. This lack of physical space to congregate in and use for ceremony creates a collection of individuals constantly challenging and grappling with authenticity and inclusion/exclusion from the larger group. By working in landscapes I am connected to, I engage ideas of authenticity, ceremony and community." - Mercedes Dorame
  
  
  
  Follow the string and see where it leads. Tongva artist Mercedes Dorame invites you to look up, down, and side to side, to “[follow] that line back into the land,... Tongva land.” Dorame hopes to remind us that the very ground we stand on in Orange County is indigenous land, the ancestral home of many tribes including the Tongva tribe. Here, the natural environment is a stage for Dorame’s cultural heritage. And suspended in this natural scene is an abalone shell, a symbolic cultural object of the Tongva people. It is these symbols tied together with string that serve as a reminder of the interconnectedness of our lives and our relationship with nature.