Beads and viruses go hand in hand

May 15, 2019 10:20 AM

Ruth Cuthland is an artist of Plains Cree, Scottish, and Irish ancestry. In her work, Trading Series, she uses beads to illustrate twelve diseases Europeans brought to North America, and porcupine quills to illustrate the disease that traveled back to Europe. In Don't Breathe, Don't Drink she beaded magnified bacterium and parasites found in the water of the 94 First Nations communities with boil water advisories
posted by ChuraChura (5 comments total)

Thanks for posting, ChuraChura. Her work is so beautiful and sad.
posted by Bella Donna at 12:47 PM on May 15, 2019

It's really important to note that the TRading Seires is in the middle of the indingeious portion of the new Royal Albeta Musuem, which tried really hard to contextualize indingieous stories on the praries.
posted by PinkMoose at 1:28 PM on May 15, 2019 [2 favorites]

The baby bottles are particularly intense. Really good work! And real sad.
posted by poe at 4:13 PM on May 15, 2019

heartbreakingly beautiful. thanks for posting.
posted by cabin fever at 10:56 PM on May 15, 2019

The Trading Series pieces are really good, thank you for posting these. One of the galleries linked on her website has some prices; they are probably cheaper than they should be for such powerful works, but are still well above my budget, sadly.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:53 AM on May 16, 2019