This story and all of L.A. TACO's Arts coverage is sponsored by Nikos Constant.
Sustainers of Life, an exhibit within Angels Gate Cultural Center in San Pedro, co-curated by Cecelia Caro and Laurie Steelink, features seven Indigenous female artists exploring intersecting themes through installation, sculpture, photography, illustration, and painting.
The show addresses colonialism’s impact, motherhood, and the crisis of “Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women” (MMIW), while also celebrating individual stories of resilience and survival.
More varied colorful pieces begin the walkthrough, depicting Native universes and nods to Indigenous Los Angeles. Before the stairs to the second half of the gallery is a blackout poem by Emily Clarke: a projector on a dull white background: “For all missing and murdered Native women…
i feel
my gut
my wholeness
(my womanness)
my back branded
i am branded
woman…”
The piece continues on, eventually bowing out to upstairs sections depicting more thorough and explicit depictions of feminine Native struggles, as well as power in community, such as Weshoyot Alvitre’s To Dress in Red, reflecting vulnerability and a missing mother.
Honoring women as sustainers of cultural knowledge and community healing, it weaves together personal narratives within broader historical contexts. Through diverse media, the exhibition creates space for mourning losses as well as celebrating the ongoing resilience of those who nurture and protect life.
Angels Gate, located above the Korean Friendship Bell, is made up of former military barracks originally established as Fort MacArthur in the early 20th century. Today, the space hosts over 50 artist studios, a gallery, and a public park with some of the South Bay’s best scenic views.
“Every two years, Angels Gate devotes its gallery space to Native American arts when the Many Winters Gathering of Elders (MWGOE) is occurring,” says Steelink.
MWGOE is an annual, four-day conference where the Native community at large gathers to share knowledge, history, wisdom, and perspective through oral tradition. This last occurrence of the gathering, in which Sustainers of Life debuted, was a resilient show of tribes across North America banding together against Trump’s move to reinstate Columbus Day.
Steelink says that Cecelia,her co-curator, is also the exhibitions director at Angels Gate, deriving the theme of this exposition from contributor Eve Lauren Little Shell LaFountain, who had her work censored from an exhibition about Native dispossession a few years ago.
Eve’s censored piece was a nude self-portrait of her first pregnancy, juxtaposed with ledger paper, titled Self Portrait After Sacagawea (which has been incorporated into the new piece, titled Becoming an Ancestor: Birthing, for the Sustainers of Life exhibit).
“Eve was considering this historical figure who ensured the survival of her colonizer companions through the Americas, with her newborn baby on her hip, while thinking about her own new role as a mother,” says Caro. “There’s a generational responsibility she is undertaking to not only care for her son’s basic needs, but to also ensure the spiritual survival of her culture and the ancestors that came before her . . . This generational responsibility bears even more weight as Native erasure is still ever-present and the traumatic experience continues to live on within her ancestral genes.”
Caro says that Steelink’s voice as co-curator brought a “historical context and intimate understanding” to the exhibit, as a previous exhibitor at Angels Gate and part of the organizing core committee for the Many Winters Gathering of Elders.
Beyond Indigeneity, Steelink is deeply embedded in the San Pedro art community as a whole, operating her own art project space and curating local artists under Cornelius Projects.
Caro began curating on a larger scale at Angels Gate in 2024 with UPEND: Female Experience and Activism. She says that MMIW was a frequent topic that surfaced, and she sought to create a larger group show platform to express against the exponentially higher rates of violence and kidnapping that Native women in the U.S. and Canada face.
“I have considered the concept of radical empathy as my guidepost, in both the exhibitions I curate and the independent curators and show proposals we [Angels Gate] invite in,” says Caro.
She senses this show will have different takeaways for different audiences.
“For non-Native folks, I hope this brings an awareness of issues that are minimized, deliberately hidden, or entirely misrepresented within the U.S. education system and Western media . . . By witnessing personal stories, this exhibition can create understanding and ultimately motivate personal actions that advance Native and Indigenous communities. For Native and Indigenous folks, I hope the takeaway is a sense of being seen, holding a respectful space for grief, and healing, while ultimately being honored and celebrated for their immense resilience and spiritual survival.”
“I hope to continue conversations with visitors to learn about their experiences, and hope to witness these intentions in the gallery, and hope it has a lasting impact beyond the exhibition’s run,” says Caro. “I feel proud of the work Laurie and I have done together, and proud of the artists who agreed to be vulnerable in sharing their works.”
Works by artists Weshoyot Alvitre, Emily Clarke, Katie Dorame, Eve-Lauryn Little Shell LaFountain, Cara Romero, Corey Stein, and Linda Vallejo are now on display at Angels Gate Cultural Center until January 24th.
Angel’s Gate Cultural Center ~ 32501 Palos Verdes Drive East, San Pedro, CA 90732
The exhibit is free to view. Public Gallery Hours: Thursday to Saturday, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
