3 September, 2024
October 9-November 21, 2024
Lotvin Family Gallery
Hopkinton Center for the Arts
98 Hayden Rowe St.
Gallery Hours: Monday–Friday, 9am–6pm, Saturday & Sunday, 9am–2pm
Hopkinton Center for the Arts has announced this year’s Curator in Residence gallery exhibition, “Portraits in RED: Missing & Murdered Indigenous Peoples Painting Project”. Featuring work from artist Nayana Lafond, it will be on display in HCA’s Lotvin Family Gallery October 9-November 21st. A free public reception to meet the artist will take place on November 1st at 6 pm.
Indigenous women and girls are 11 times more likely to go missing or be murdered than the national average, three quarters of indigenous women experience violence from their intimate partner and 98% of indigenous people experience violence in their lifetime. Men and two spirit people are not far behind in these staggering statistics.
The Missing & Murdered Indigenous Peoples crisis has inspired the series Portraits in RED: Missing & Murdered Indigenous Peoples Painting Project which began on May 5, 2020 by Indigenous artist Nayana LaFond who never intended it to become a project at all.
Lafond notes, “In 2020 I had been working on a body of work in response to covid from my perspective as a leukemia and bone marrow transplant survivor when I stumbled into doing the MMIWG/P painting project through a Facebook group called Social Distance Powwow. People were people posting images in support of the missing and murdered indigenous people's crisis. I was inspired and reached out to one of the women to ask if I could paint her for my own catharsis and to share with the group. She agreed and the first painting was done. I did not anticipate the response I would receive when I shared the finished painting back to the Facebook group which inspired it”
Over three years later Lafond has completed about 110 portraits and has a waiting queue. Each portrait is of a missing or murdered indigenous person, their family member or an advocate or activist working in the cause. LaFond doesn't profit in any way from this work and hopes to bring awareness to this ongoing issue as well as healing for the families she works with.
