'Quilted Survivance' at Millicent Rogers Museum shines a light on Navajo quilts

Diné story quilter Susan Hudson is having her first dedicated museum exhibition at the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos. The artist, a 2024 National Endowment for the Arts Heritage fellow, is showing her work alongside community members from the multigenerational Navajo Quilt Project in an exhibition co-curated by Millicent Rogers’ Claire Motsinger and independent curator Annie Drysdale. “Quilted Survivance: Susan Hudson and the Navajo Quilt Project” will remain on view through Feb. 1.

“The title, ‘Quilted Survivance,’ deserves a little bit of explanation,” Motsinger said. “‘Survivance’ was originally an academic term that specifically relates to the way that contemporary Indigenous people and artists look to the traumas that have been suffered by their ancestors, and yet, through that, thrive. … So, it’s survival as resistance.”

Drysdale, who wrote her master’s thesis on Hudson’s quilts, said the idea of “survivance,” as described by the scholar Gerald Vizenor (Minnesota Chippewa), perfectly suits Hudson’s work, which uses a non-Indigenous art form — quilting — to tell Indigenous stories.

“I had never seen an Indigenous contemporary artist who was willing to tell her ancestors’ stories about colonial violence in a way that was directly engaging a white audience as her primary demographic,” Drysdale said. “She’s unapologetic about it.”

Many of Hudson’s quilts were inspired by Indigenous ledger art, an art form that began in the 19th century when old accounting ledgers were among the only sources of paper available to Indigenous artists. In those pieces, Hudson sews figures onto paragraphs of hand-stitched text to recreate the look of ledger art, as well as to create connections between words and images.

Ledger art and quilting were both practiced at government-run Indian boarding schools — a notorious 150-year project of forced assimilation, which officially lasted from 1819 to 1969, although some of these government-run schools continued to operate later.

“Quilting was brought to the Diné community through the boarding schools,” Motsinger said. “So, many of the quilts are entitled ‘Boarding School-Style’ quilts. Even though many of us might recognize, oh, that’s a log cabin pattern, or a nine-patch or a star quilt, for that community, they are all boarding school-style quilts, because that’s where they entered into material culture for the Diné.”

Hudson’s mother attended a boarding school where she suffered abuse but also learned quilting.

“Her mother is the one who taught Susan how to quilt,” Drysdale said. “So, there is a reclamation and transmutation of her mother’s trauma into her own triumph, and into a legacy for her children and grandchildren and great-great-great-grandchildren, who can see their families’ histories and narratives represented in important spaces like museums that are shared with international audiences.”

Hudson’s eight-panel piece, titled “Whispers of Survivors,” recounts the physical and sexual abuse of girls at boarding schools. Despite the heaviness of the narrative, Motsinger said the artist’s simplified style makes the material approachable, potentially even for families.

“You’re not necessarily getting a lifelike, naturalistic depiction. I wouldn’t say there’s a softening of the historical narrative, but it allows you to enter into that historical narrative at the level that you are ready,” Motsinger said. “So I think it would depend, person to person, whether or not they feel it’s appropriate for their children. But, at the same time, there is a lot of color and texture and joy presented throughout the exhibition, as well — and extraordinary technical skill — so I think there’s a lot for everybody.”

In addition to Hudson’s quilts, the exhibition includes a selection of pieces from the Navajo Quilt Project, a community-oriented narrative quilting project, which the artist co-founded in 2016.

“Susan is very proud and confident in her work, but she was adamant that this exhibition not only show her work, but bring forward her community and those next generations,” Drysdale said. “It was important for her that she shared that spotlight with the Navajo Quilt Project, and be able to bring in quilts by artists as young as 7 and as old as 84, including the work that she created with her niece, Lily.”

Motsinger described the opening as a “complete family event,” with many of the Navajo Nation quilters and their families in attendance. The quilters themselves represent a range of lifestyles, genders and ages.

“One piece that’s highlighted is by an elder who is particularly important in his community for the medicine that he provides, and he lives traditionally in a hogan without electricity,” Motsinger said. “The quilt itself was stitched by hand, by firelight.”

The curators hope audiences will be drawn to the quilts for their beauty but will also learn something from them.

“On the surface, it’s a display full of color and texture and brightness and joy,” Motsinger said, “but underneath, it also tells a story of survivance.”