Reflections on Returning

Tricia Rainwater will share photographic work taken from retracing her tribe’s journey on the Trail of Tears. She will discuss the challenges of accessing maps, trail routes, and other historical documents specific to Choctaw people, as well as speculating why accurate information is difficult to access. In this talk, Tricia will share how the information she discovered impacted and informed her trip. Through this act of reclamation, she visits the places of pain where Choctaws were forcibly walked and asks, how does one return and reconnect to the places sacred to their ancestors with reverence and respect after they have been absent for so long?

Angelica Trimble-Yanu will be sharing about her process in returning to and creating her first site specific project, Iyeska on her Oglála Lakȟóta homelands. She will elaborate on her collaboration experience with landscape as a form of reconnection to cultural and familial roots. Angelica will also be speaking on her short film Makha (Earth), commissioned by Filmsight Productions and exhibited at the De Young Open in 2020. Makha (Earth) incorporates footage taken in her ancestral homelands in South Dakota during the making of Iyeska.

Tricia and Angelica will be in conversation about their work with Alyssarhaye Graciano who is an artist, community curator, and the Visual Arts Curator at MACLA. Refreshments will be served!

Tricia Rainwater's Trail of Tears work has been sponsored by a grant from the SF Arts Commission.

About Tricia:

Tricia Rainwater (she/her) is a mixed race Choctaw Indigiqueer multimedia artist based on Ramaytush Ohlone land. Her work has been featured nationally and internationally through group shows and artist features. In her work Tricia focuses on creating pathways to a resilient and hopeful future by centering healing and process. Tricia’s work ranges from self portraiture to large sculptural installations. She is a recent recipient of the SF Artists Grant through the SF Arts Commission.

About Angelica:

Angelica Trimble-Yanu, raised in Oakland, California is an enrolled member of the Oglála Lakȟóta Nation from Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Angelica has received a Bachelors of General Fine Arts at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon with a focus in printmaking and sculpture. Angelica currently lives and works in Oakland, California. She is represented by Mrkt Gallery in San Francisco.

Her work has been exhibited at the de Young Museum and she was recently nominated for the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 2022 SECA Award. Her Monotypes are featured in the permanent collection of the Five Oaks Museum, Lakota Dream Museum and Monument, SGC Inte​​rnational Archives, Zuckerman Museum, and the Caroyln Moore Writer’s House. Angelica has previously shown internationally with Itsliquid Space in Venice, Italy and locally with Mrkt, Grayloft, Shoh, BlackFish, Envelope, and Blanc Space galleries. She is a recipient of the Artist in Residence Program at Kala Art Institute and Berkeley Art Center. She has received two awards in writing and printmaking from the Pacific Northwest College of Art and a printmaking Award from Zealous. Angelica has participated in public artist talks with the De Young Museum, Santa Clara University and Oregon State University at the Eena Haw Native American Longhouse. Her work has been published locally and internationally by The Oregonian, Divide Magazine, Howl Magazine, The Racket San Francisco, PBS News Hour, SF Bay View, and Together Magazine.