45 1/2 Commonwealth Ave
Concord, MA 01742
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We Hold These Truths
Statement
We Hold These Truths is a place-based installation that centers Indigenous women as vital memory-keepers and truth-bearers of New England’s living history. Transforming the gallery into a collective archive and relational memory-space, this exhibition weaves together historical research (including a handwritten recreation of the Declaration of Independence) with contemporary portraiture of Native women of the Eastern Woodlands—mothers, makers, dancers, paddlers, and seed-keepers of our ancient histories and traditional ways of life.
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November’s celebration of Native American Heritage Month arrives on the eve of the United States of America’s 250th anniversary. In recognition of this historic convergence, this project honors the Black and Native ancestors whose lives were sacrificed for American independence and denied the promised fruits of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. My own ancestor, Cuff Annum, fought and died in the American Revolution on April 19, 1779—exactly four years after the shot heard ’round the world.
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Against the forceful tides of historical erasure, this work carries forward Cuff’s unfinished pursuit of freedom and preserves the safeguarded truths of his life, alongside the kinswomen represented here, who hold oceans of ancestral memory within them. Without the revolutionary movements and courageous acts of our ancestors, who “stood on the frontlines of colonization on Turtle Island,” as aptly put by Lauren Peters (Mashpee Wampanoag) pictured above, we would not be here today. This installation pays tribute to their collective memory.
What do you see? On the back wall, three large photographic portraits—taken on the traditional lands of the Hassanamisco Nipmuc, Mashantucket Pequot, and Mashpee Wampanoag peoples—embody the matriarchal lifeways, diasporic movements, and elastic kinship networks that have sustained these lands since time immemorial, long before New England had a name. Kuttabottomish taubotne, many thanks to Jasmine Rochelle Goodspeed (Hassanamisco Nipmuc) for generously helping me with naming and translation for the photograph titles!
Kohar Avakian is a Nipmuc, Black, Armenian artist, historian, and educator from Worcester, Massachusetts. Born into a large, interwoven family, she is a composite of the people, memories, and languages of her communities and infused into the land around her. These relationships form the foundation of her reparative approach to history and artistic practice.
As a descendant of genocide survivors still awaiting reparations, Avakian has long been captivated by the power of hearing other people’s histories from their own mouths. Her commitment to self-representation and relational storytelling animates both her scholarship and her art.
She received her B.A. in History (modified with Native American Studies) from Dartmouth College and is currently a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at Yale University. Blending historical research, visual art, and oral traditions, Kohar transforms fragmented archives into living constellations of kinship and memory, weaving art and history into spaces of return, continuity, and repair.
Her writing and artwork have appeared in "We Are All Armenian: Voices from the Diaspora," "Boundless: Native American Abundance in Art and Literature," and more.