Melanie Yazzie

As a printmaker, painter, and sculptor, Melanie Yazzie’s work draws upon her rich Diné (Navajo) cultural heritage. She is of the Salt and Bitter Water clans. Her work follows the Diné dictum “walk in beauty” literally, creating beauty and harmony. As an artist, she works to serve as an agent of change by encouraging others to learn about social, cultural, and political phenomena shaping the contemporary lives of Native peoples in the United States and beyond. Her work incorporates both personal experiences as well as the events and symbols from Dine culture. Her early work focused on depictions of the harsh realities of Native peoples (i.e., racism, identity conflict, poverty, abuse, etc.) to bring to Native issues to the forefront, but more recently she is making work with a positive twist. Due to personal health issues and trying to live a calmer life style, she is focusing on quiet and balance, her work is reflecting this shift. Her work is informed and shaped by personal experiences and tries to tell many stories about things both real and imagined. The history of Native America and Native peoples includes forced assimilation and cultural genocide that has occurred due in great part to government boarding schools. Native youth and communities today are burdened with the consequences of this history and by an educational system that prioritizes knowledge foreign to Native community’s indigenous knowledge. Something she stresses in her teaching is the use of safe, non-toxic methods of printmaking in her work.

Ms. Yazzie uses her travels around the world to connect with other indigenous peoples. Her visits to New Zealand, the Arctic, to native peoples of Russia, and to many native nations in the United States have been the impetus for continued dialogue about aboriginal cultural practices, language, song, storytelling, and survival.