Anita + Nokosee Fields

Jan 22

Created in collaboration with her son Nokosee Fields (Osage/Cherokee/Muscogee), Anita Fields’s (Osage/Muscogee) WayBack invites visitors to gather in physical relation to each other, to Sugarloaf Mound, and to Osage ancestors, history, and legacy. When the Osage Nation purchased part of Sugarloaf Mound in 2007, the sacred site was reabsorbed into the Nation through the auspices of property, extending Osage territory from the site of their displacement in Oklahoma back to their ancestral homeland. Atop this site, forty platforms are installed, modeled after those found at Osage events in Oklahoma. Each platform is embellished with ribbons that reference Osage cosmologies of balance between sky, water, and earth. Nokosee Fields’s composition for wind instruments invites further consideration of the earth from which the mound was constructed, the sky that unfolds above the platforms, the sound of the Mississippi River on the banks below the quarry and the wind that flows through the surrounding trees that transform first into breath. After the exhibition, the platforms will travel from St. Louis to Tulsa where they will be distributed to Osage community members completing the link between the current home of the Osage Nation and its ancestral homelands.

WayBack is supported in part by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Artist Anita Fields and musician Nokosee Fields, mother and son, are collaborating on work for Counterpublic. Anita creates clay and textile works that reflect her Native Osage culture. Her practice explores the complexities of cultural influences and the intersections of balance and chaos found within our lives. Her work can be found in collections such as the Museum of Art and Design in New York, the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, and more.

Nokosee, the great nephew of celebrated Cherokee fiddler Sam O’Fields, began studying orchestral violin at a young age and has recently turned his attention to various forms of traditional American music, performing, teaching, and touring professionally. A quest for balance shapes his work, whether he’s reconciling the weight of tradition with his creative impulses; challenging the demands and vacuity of colonialist, capitalist structures and systems with the richness of his experience and upbringing as a member of the Osage, Creek and Cherokee Nations.