“Joy is a huge part of my work too, my practice, it has to be,” artist Natalie Ball said at a Visiting Artist Lecture Series talk hosted by the School of Art and Design on Thursday. “I know the content is heavy, but it is important to have joy in these spaces.”
Ball is an internationally known artist who grew up in Portland, Oregon. Her mom is from a rural Black town in Arkansas. Her dad is from Chiloquin, Oregon and the Klamath and Modoc tribes.
Ball focuses on food sovereignty and reconnecting to her homeland while living on her ancestral land with her children. After the birth of her second child, Ball took a break from artwork before obtaining her masters degree from Yale.
“I just bet on myself,” Ball said, speaking about leaving her children and her homeland to study at Yale. “Thinking about the work I wanted to make, having a new relationship with the homeland.”
The title of Thursday’s talk, “Power Objects,” was inspired by a critique while Ball attended Yale. Her sculptures were called power objects, a term she had not heard before. There is a collection of these power objects at the Met Museum which are a series of objects from different tribes described as the “physical and the metaphysical joining.” The objects each have specific intent.
Ball realized that she had been around power objects her whole life. She uses her practice to create power objects with a connection to herself and her community, retaining power throughout the whole process unlike museum work which is often taken from its original creator and thus colonized.
In her work, Ball is interested in joining objects together — found, borrowed, bought and collected objects. She borrows pieces from her family and people she has active relationships with. The understanding is that it is an exchange and they may not get the object back. One of her pieces includes a moccasin of her dads that will never be returned.
“It’s hella Indigenous,” Ball said. “This idea of borrowing.”
In 2018, Ball created a series called “Pussy Hats” in response to the Pussy Hat Movement as a protest against Donald Trump and the infamous line “Grab her by the pussy.” The three hats created by Ball all include a cut up ski mask. One hat features a skull covered in teeth poking through with tufts of curly hair coming out of the top in three pigtails. Another hat has pink fabric underneath that makes the ski mask look as if it has a gaping mouth. Clipped to either side with beaded berets are tufts of straight, brown hair.
“I just felt like there were certain narratives that weren’t there that were like my own,” Ball said, critiquing the Pussy Hats movement. “And I just represented [myself] with a set of pussy hats.”
An important part of Ball’s work is the incorporation of humor. Her work covers heavy topics that relate to Ball’s identity, from the erasure of Indigenous communities to anti-Blackness to blood quantum rules to missing and murdered Indigenous women. She incorporates humor in with these intense topics for her own mental health.
“Humor is a medicine,” Ball said. “It helps get you through things and it helps you deal with things. But also humor is a skill.”
The Wentrup Gallery in Berlin, Germany houses Ball’s latest work. “Deer Woman Gets Enrolled October 30, 2013” represents Ball as Deer Woman. Oct. 30, 2013 is the day she was enrolled into her tribe, at 30 years old. The series is about the experience of enrolling and becoming a “card carrying Indian” after being an Indigenous woman her whole life. She uses power objects to process this experience.
The narratives of her ancestors both known and unknown are a huge part of Ball’s work. She has different memories of them all over the walls in her studio.
“[I] think about myself as a future ancestor too,” Ball said.
