Forum 88
Marie Watt: LAND STITCHES WATER SKY explores steel and glass—materials deeply tied to Western Pennsylvania’s industrial history—from Watt’s Indigenous perspective as a citizen of the Seneca Nation with German-Scot ancestry. This exhibition presents sculptures informed by the artist’s community collaboration and invites visitors to consider the layered histories and personal memories of familiar materials.
For over a decade, Marie Watt has been working with steel I beams, drawn to their interwoven history with generations of Haudenosaunee ironworkers, known as “Skywalkers,” who built many of the iconic landmarks in the Manhattan skyline and other urban infrastructure. In preparing for this exhibition, Watt undertook extensive research into the history and contemporary processes of steel and glass production in the Pittsburgh region. As one of the most recycled materials in the world, steel carries the legacy of past generations forward into the present and future similar to how Watt works with blankets as sites of ongoing stories and symbols of our connectedness.
Watt’s interdisciplinary practice explores the intersection of history, community, and storytelling as a catalyst for connection, and the artist is known for assembling materials drawn from community-led workshops. For this new body of work, Watt partnered with the Pittsburgh Poetry Collective and Carnegie Museum of Art’s educators in engaging workshops that inspired a list of words in response to Western Pennsylvania’s industrial history and present-day concerns. Visitors will experience the culmination of Watt’s process in the sculptures that carry various words collected during the artist’s engagement with many creative communities in Pittsburgh.
Marie Watt: LAND STITCHES WATER SKY is organized by Liz Park, Richard Armstrong Curator of Contemporary Art and Alyssa Velazquez, assistant curator.
About the Artist
Marie Watt (b. 1967, Seattle, WA) is a member of the Seneca Nation, and also has German-Scot ancestry. Her interdisciplinary work draws from history, biography, Haudenosaunee protofeminism, and Indigenous teachings; in it, she explores the intersection of history, community, and storytelling. Through collaborative actions, she instigates multigenerational and cross-disciplinary conversations that create a lens and conversation for understanding connectedness to place, one another, and the universe.
Part of → Forum Series
Forum Gallery presents the work of living artists in an ongoing series that invites them to expand their practice through a commission or new presentation of existing works. Initiated in 1990, and with 86 projects to date, the Forum series is an opportunity for artists to deepen their relationship to and understanding of the museum.
