White Qaspeq

Webb’s practice includes advocacy work on behalf of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. She has expressed the enormity of this crisis and its personal connections through drawing black-ink portraits of these women on white cloth parkas—called a qaspeq in the Yup’ik language—in large scale format. Webb made her first qaspeq from hand-stitched, recycled bedsheets and drew on it the faces of forty-seven missing or murdered Alaska Native women and girls. I first saw this work when I met Webb in 2017 through mutual friend Melissa Shaginoff (Athna/Paiute artist and social activist), and we introduced her to Monica Shah, Head of Collections at the Anchorage Museum, who facilitated its purchase for the Museums’ collection. When Webb shared this work with us, she expressed the care, caution, love and difficulties of making this work, which she was still adding to. She took breaks for herself and waited until she was ready to work again, to bring these women forward for all of us to witness, to share, and to support.

Source: arcticartssummit.ca