In her solo exhibition, Acts of Love, Refusal and Resistance, Sara Siestreem, a Hanis Coos artist based out of Portland, Oregon, includes works made during yearslong protests of a proposed pipeline on her people's traditional lands while preserving traditional basket design and bringing its motifs into massive abstract paintings.
Some of the latter, on view now at the Missoula Art Museum, feel like they contain too much information to take in on first viewing or from a single vantage point. Some are upward of 16 feet wide. The titles also signal how many layers they contain. Take “starry-starry-night, over a temporary regime,” which includes grids of yellow, white and black, nearly graffiti-like layering of churning circular brush-strokes, Xerox transfers of seashells, all with a title that points to Van Gogh and politics, whether current or past.
