Painful Beauty: Tlingit Women, Beadwork, and the Art of Resilience

Tlingit women have been creating beaded designs on garments for over 150 years, showcasing their resilience, strength, and power. Contemporary artists highlight the significance of historical beading practices in their artworks, which serve as a site of historical negotiations and contemporary inspirations. The book "Painful Beauty" is the first dedicated study of Tlingit beadwork.

\n Format: Hardback
\n Length: 240 pages
\n Publication date: 27 July 2021
\n Publisher: University of Washington Press
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For over a century and a half, Tlingit women artists have intricately beaded vibrant and captivating designs onto moccasins, dolls, octopus bags, tunics, and various garments. Painful Beauty suggests that during a period when Indigenous cultural practices were actively suppressed, beading played a crucial role in sustaining cultural continuity, showcasing the resilience, strength, and power of Tlingit women. Beadwork served diverse purposes, ranging from ceremonial to economic, as women crafted beaded pieces for community use and to sell to tourists. Similar to other forms of Tlingit art, beadwork reflects rich artistic visions deeply intertwined with the environment, clan histories, and Tlingit worldviews. Contemporary Tlingit artists such as Alison Bremner, Chloe French, Shgen Doo Tan George, Lily Hudson Hope, Tanis Seiltin, and Larry McNeil emphasize the significance of historical beading practices in their diverse and boundary-pushing artworks. By working with museum collection materials, photographs, archives, and interviews with artists and elders, Megan Smetzer reimagines this often overlooked artform as a site of historical negotiations and contemporary inspirations. She demonstrates how beading granted Tlingit women the freedom to innovate aesthetically, assert their clan crests and identities, support tribal sovereignty, and pass on cultural knowledge. Painful Beauty stands as the first dedicated study of Tlingit beadwork and contributes to the growing body of literature addressing womens artistic expressions on the Northwest Coast.

\n Weight: 858g\n
Dimension: 186 x 262 x 24 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780295748948\n \n