Artist Statement
Yá'át'ééh abiní. Nicole Neidhardt yinishyé, Kiyaa'áanii nishłį́, Bilagáana bashishchiin, do Tsinajinii dashicheii, do Bilagáana dashinalí. Ákót’éego diné asdzáán nishłį́.
Would you like to come into my celestial hogan?
The worlds contained in Nicole Neidhardt’s MFA thesis exhibition, Stories Held in a Time Traveller’s Hogan, offer glimmers into Diné Time, Diné Aesthetics, Indigenous Futurisms, and Sa’ąh Naagháí Bik’eh Hózhǫ́ǫ́n. The Diné Knowledges held in this exhibition reach across time and space to Diné Ancestors, to Diné Time Travellers, to the Land, and to family. These connections are held within constellations of temporality and relationality that are created by stories. Throughout this re-search journey, I began to wonder, how do we activate the Land as Time Machine? What happens when portals, or spaces of fluid time energy, on the Land start making their own stories? Diné Time Travellers open up a space for these questions. They are masterful weavers of time, story, and Diné aesthetics. Their weavings illuminate pathways for dreaming expansively outside of colonial realities. For this thesis project, I designed and hand-cut portraits of Diné Time Travellers out of mirror mylar. These portraits hang from the walls of my celestial hogan. A hogan is an 8-sided traditional Navajo home. The portraits are based on two sets of siblings, my mom, Mary and my aunty, Faith and me and my little brother, Hayden.
For this thesis project, the Diné Time Travellers wanted to visit the four Sacred Mountains to spend time with the stories that reside in the Land there. My family – my mom, Mary, my dad, Joe, and my brother, Hayden – travelled with me and the Diné Time Travellers to each of the Sacred Mountains in early 2021. We travelled to:
Sis Naajiní (Blanca Peak) – Eastern Sacred Mountain - White
Tsoodził (Mount Taylor) – Southern Sacred Mountain - Blue
Dook’o’oosłííd (San Francisco Peaks) – Western Sacred Mountain - Yellow
Dibé Ntsaa (Hesperus Mountain) – Northern Sacred Mountain - Black
White, Blue, Yellow, and Black are the Navajo sacred colours and they are associated with the four Sacred Mountains and the directions East, South, West, and North. These colours come from Diné Creation Stories, from previous worlds, and from the ways these mountains were adorned when they first came to the Glittering World, the current world we as humans live in now.
My family went above and beyond to help me with my thesis project. They helped me to infuse this exhibition with Diné stories.
