The Brooklyn Rail

In Flags of Our Mothers, Raven Halfmoon honors her Caddo heritage and ancestors while pushing back against Indigenous silencing. With monumental hand-built stoneware sculptures filling the galleries of the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, she claims space for Indigenous peoples, herself included. The sheer size and weight of the figural sculptures command attention. As she works, Halfmoon considers the lived experiences of her ancestors—their traditions and the impact of colonization—and seeks to empower her community and uplift their stories. At the same time, she reflects more broadly on the rich heritage of Indigenous peoples, as well as their own tragedies as colonizers forced them off their land. The evidence of her emotions is preserved in the glaze, divots, indentations, and figures that adorn the surfaces of her work.

Co-organized with Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, where it will be on view next year, Flags of Our Mothers is Halfmoon’s first major traveling museum show and marks a significant step in the artist’s career, a step she’s taken with apparent strength. The exhibition title gives context for the work on view and signifies Halfmoon’s interest in paying homage to the women in her matrilineal Caddo society and Indigenous women in general.

These women are represented in the figures in the sculptures, as well as in the mindset with which they were made. Halfmoon’s voice echoes through the galleries, emanating from a film in which the artist discusses her inspirations and creative process and shows glimpses of how her monumental works are created. “This is my history, this is my family, and it should be heard,” Halfmoon says as the film follows her through the studio, turning dark blocks of clay into sculptures. She presses, rubs, pulls, and scrapes into the surface with her hands and various tools, including a fork. She uses her strength to work the dense material as assistants help her roll and pile heavy coils to build the monumental structures. “The building process is very physical, but it’s my favorite part,” she says. “It’s really important for me to see human experience in the work.” A crucial part of Halfmoon’s creative process is reading about her community and Caddo heritage, as well as the history of other Indigenous groups. She also considers their lived experiences, including the atrocities of colonization, displacement, and ongoing silencing. “When I’m reading history about what happened to my people and other Indigenous people, it’s upsetting and makes me angry and mad, but I put all of that into the work,” Halfmoon says.

The resulting surfaces are covered in marks that reveal evidence of her physical laboring with the clay. Each imprint her hands leave as they dig into the dense material is preserved. “When people view my pieces five hundred years later, you can see the moment that I laid down the mark,” she says. The surface also acts as evidence of Halfmoon’s own growth and strength, both in the sense of her body growing stronger as she works the material, as well as in a psychological and emotional sense as she releases her emotions and confronts the lasting impact of generational trauma.

In creating these pieces, Halfmoon gives herself room to explore her heritage and claim space for her ancestors. The figures occupy this space, staring back at the viewer with impenetrable expressions. Standing over twelve feet tall and weighing 2,400 pounds, Flagbearer (2022) claims by far the most space in the show. Stacked in three parts, the work also points to the group efforts required to construct, fire, and install each piece. Like the rest of the sculptures on view, the color of the glaze is symbolic. Red glaze represents the soil in Halfmoon’s home of Oklahoma, as well as the blood of murdered Indigenous women. Black recalls the dark clay of the Red River, which divides Oklahoma and Texas and is where Caddo bands originally settled. Flagbearer displays a prominent signature with “Halfmoon” written in black dripping glaze that contrasts the red and white surface. Resembling tagging, the artist’s signature has become a part of her practice, acting both as a reminder of who made the work, as well as her family legacy, Caddo tattooing, and traditional motifs from ancient pottery. Books on Caddo ceramics are placed throughout the museum, inviting visitors to further research these motifs.

Additional references to Caddo tattooing are seen throughout the show, including in the glazed marks on HASINAI (Caddo): Our People (2021). Standing next to Flagbearer at nearly nine feet tall, the massive work commands equal attention. Two large faces comprise the bottom portion of the sculpture and support a parade of partial faces ascending the length of the piece. The countless sets of eyes stare out at the viewer. Behind the work is a large window onto the sculpture garden of the museum. Normally hosting outdoor pieces, the garden was uncharacteristically empty at the time of my visit. Instead, Halfmoon’s sculpture standing in the window occupies the line of sight where an outdoor work would usually be visible. In a way, the sculpture viewed with the grounds of the museum as a backdrop pays homage to the Wappinger and Munsee Lenape Peoples who were removed from the land.

Indeed, throughout the show, Halfmoon’s work stands in for all of the people who the artist carries in her practice. “I’m just the hands and the face of this work, but really it’s all of my family, it’s my ancestors,” she says as the film ends. “I almost don’t even want to take credit for all of this. I’m just the person that people see, but it’s so much more. I carry a lot of people when I make this work. It’s not just my own experiences, it’s views and experiences that have been passed down generationally. It’s more than just myself.”