Audio Stop 735

LUZENE HILL: 

I’m Luzene Hill.  I’m Eastern Band Cherokee, and in Cherokee my name is pronounced “Lu-she-nee Oh-tawn-lu-ee.”

This is a drawing, untitled, that is part of a series called Matri Lines. 

NARRATOR: 

Hill has spent years studying matrilineal Indigenous societies and the lower incidence of violence against women within these cultures as compared to that within other cultures. The Matri Lines series grew out of those explorations.

LH: 

This drawing is made with tea stain, charcoal, ink stain, gouache, and colored pencil. In the center of the drawing, in the dark area, there is a ghost almost of a figure. And that figure is the back of a female body, moving toward the tea stain shapes.  And parts of the leg, parts of the breasts, shoulders you can see on either side of the dark area in the center.

NARRATOR: 

Hill created this work while attending an artists’ residency in the mountains of North Carolina, located on ancestral Cherokee homelands. 

LH: 

And when I went to the residency, I was struck by a feeling of being home, and belonging.  The Eastern Band of Cherokee have lived on these homelands for millennia.  The fact that my ancestors never left their homeland, that we have always been in this place, is really precious.  It’s beyond expressing.

And when I was walking around the mountains at that residency, I was fascinated by the correlation between the mountains, the soft Appalachian Mountains that envelop a person – and it correlates to me the soft, round aspects of a female figure.  And so the female figure and the Matri Lines and the mountains all sort of come together for me in this drawing.

NARRATOR: 

At the same time, Hill hopes viewers will bring their own perspectives and experiences to the work.

LH: 

My goal with my installations and with all of my drawings is to challenge the viewer and not spoon feed them.  So I’m fine if the viewer doesn’t see what I was seeing – but if they’re seeing something. And what they see is what they bring to it.