Angelica Trimble-Yanu

Lives and works in Oakland, CA, USA

Artist statement

I am an interdisciplinary Oglála Lakȟóta artist working primarily in Monotype Printmaking. My work is often complex, expanding across Film, Printmaking, and Sculpture. My process is derivative of my first memory of ceremony and landscape, which was the sweet and heavy smell of sage, sugar and smoke. Dancers’ clothing sang to the rhythm of bells, cones, and beads, with flashes of neon yellow, red, blue, orange, everywhere. These Lakȟóta gatherings were always this colorful in my memory, and left an impact on how I relate to landscape and ceremony, how I look to color and shape as cultural containers for language. I understood what it meant to live the Lakota way through the tradition of song, color and texture. I grasped onto these early memories of my Lakȟóta community through these visual signifiers. I often use movement and sculpture as a container to articulate my innate connection to cultural landscapes and objects. I approach this collaboration of my processes and materials to explore questions of Identity and remembrance. In 2015, I began to create abstract Monotype prints, almost obsessively. Constantly pulling visuals of strata and mountainscapes from memory, this was my resistance to the slow disappearance of the memory of my homeland. I found there was a strong need for reconnection to sacred land through the process of Monotype and Sculpture. This reconnection through printmaking influenced a greater understanding of relations larger than my own.

Artwork