The University of Tennessee School of Art is hosting Navajo artist and University of Colorado Professor, Melanie Yazzie, for a public lecture on her work on Thursday, September 23, 2021, at 7:30 pm in the McCarty Auditorium, room 109, in the Art and Architecture Building.

Yazzie will be on campus from September 20– 24, for a series of activities. These will include:

• A collaborative project with students and faculty in the UT Printshop on a print edition related to the topic of mapping and land use.
• Mapping Home / Collecting Truths: Works by Indigenous and International Artists, an exhibition organized by Yazzie with prints by 35 indigenous and international artists, addressing ideas of homeland and its intersection with the environment, climate, or other influences.  The exhibition will be on view in the Printmaking Showcase Gallery on the second floor of the Art and Architecture Building from September 1–October 30, 2021.
• The public lecture  on Thursday, September 23, 2021, at 7:30 pm in the McCarty Auditorium, room 109, in the Art and Architecture Building.

About her work Yazzie writes: “The Navajo Paradigm in which we create the world with our thoughts, grounds and motivates my work as an artist, as a teacher, an Indigenous person who is a member of the Navajo Nation, and as faculty of the University of Colorado.  The key themes and processes central to my work include: outreach to rural communities on the local, national, and global level with Indigenous people, colonization, the idea of homeland, nature, the female archetype, and issues relating to health and safety. My intellectual, creative, classroom, and outreach is rooted in the fact that we learn from one another, through our shared experience in the practice of art-making, an ancient, sustainable way of both being in the world, and a way in which to live together, always in a state of learning. Of principal research interest is our diverse yet shared foundational, theoretical, and philosophical bodies of knowledge that express our connections to our homelands.”

Melanie Yazzie’s visit is supported by the Haines-Morris Endowment in the UT College of Arts and Sciences, the UT School of Art, and the Betsey Worden Printmaking Endowment.