“It is a crucial time for our people to create conversations around traditional societal structures, power and leadership... we must properly acknowledge our matriarchs.”
- Morgan Asoyuf

Morgan Asoyuf (née Green) is a Ts’msyen Eagle Clan artist from Ksyeen River (Prince Rupert area), British Columbia, Canada. Asoyuf received a Certificate of Fashion Design from the Blanche Macdonald Centre (Vancouver, BC) before apprenticing under wood sculptors Henry Green and Phil Gray. Since 2007, Asoyuf has been studying design and carving under wood sculptor Richard Adkins. Asoyuf went on to study bronze casting at The Crucible (Oakland, CA); earn diplomas in Jewelry Design and Stone Cutting from the Vancouver Metal Art School (Bowen Island, BC); and complete an intensive gem setting program at Revere Academy (San Francisco, CA). Her work has been shown at numerous Pacific Northwest events and institutions, including the Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art (Vancouver, BC), the Museum of Vancouver (Vancouver, BC), the Steinbrueck Native Gallery (Seattle, WA), and Vancouver Pride Art Walk.

Royal Portrait reimagines royal regalia and portraiture to bring attention to the importance to the Indigenous matriarch. In Ts’msyen culture, the matriarchs hold a special high-ranking position that can be both compared and contrasted to the western concept of royalty. “Royalty” or “high rank” is passed down matrilineally and signifies a responsibility to care for one’s land and people. “Today, there is much confusion and struggle in our communities in making these important decisions, especially around land,” writes Asoyuf. “Colonial governments and modern tribal councils often do not respect these inherent rights.” Through the creation of new regalia, including crowns and royal jewelry, and portraits of northwest Indigenous matriarchs and activists, Asoyuf highlights matriarchal power within the Northwest Coast system as a legitimization of Indigenous sovereignty.

Derived from the Museum’s location along the Mississippi, as well as from the focus of the exhibition series, Tributaries features artists whose work is beginning to have a significant impact on the metal arts community.

EXHIBITION & PROGRAMMING SUPPORT

• Windgate Charitable Foundation
  
  
• Hyde Family Foundations
  

OPERATING SUPPORT

• ArtsMemphis
  
  
• Tennessee Arts Commission

Curated by Dr. Earnestine Jenkins

Through its celebration of artisans and artists from West and Central African through to modern-day Memphis, this exhibit examines the role of the blacksmith in diverse African contexts and how that artisan identity and associated blacksmithing practices changed in America due to slavery.

Among those metal workers featured are the enslaved blacksmiths of two local plantation sites, the Hunt Phelan House and the Hilderbrand Plantation; blacksmiths and entrepreneurs Blair Hunt and David Carnes; and contemporary artists Richard Hunt, Lorenzo Scruggs, Hawkins Bolden, and Desmond Lewis. From Artisans to Artists draws on the knowledge and research of guest curator Dr. Earnestine Jenkins, who utilizes surviving artifacts and primary source documents from both sides of the Atlantic Ocean to bring to the forefront a crucial part of Memphis’s artistic history.

Dr. Jenkins is a historian of visual culture and professor at University of Memphis (Memphis, TN). Among her publications are such titles as African Americans in Memphis (2009) and Race, Representation, and Photography in 19th Century Memphis: from Slavery to Jim Crow (2016). Dr. Jenkins has curated exhibits of African and African American art for the Art Museum of the University of Memphis, the Jones Hall Gallery (University of Memphis), Dixon Gallery and Gardens (Memphis, TN), and Memphis Brooks Museum of Art (Memphis, TN).