Jaad Kuujus honours her ancestors with Chilkat weavings at UBC's Museum of Anthropology, to March 29
Artist’s intricate ceremonial regalia and everyday garments feature mountain goat wool as a key material
The Spirit of Shape by Jaad Kuujus, 2015–2018. Photo courtesy of Douglas Reynolds Gallery
The Museum of Anthropology at UBC presents Jaad Kuujus: Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother until March 29
MOUNTAIN GOAT WOOL, a vital material for many Northwest Coast communities, is the connecting thread across a new exhibition by Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O’Brien). Born in Alert Bay and now based in Vancouver, the artist—who is of Haida, Kwakwaka’wakw, and Irish descent—makes naaxiin (Chilkat) weavings that honour her ancestors, from intricate ceremonial regalia to simple garments.
Jaad Kuujus: Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother is now on view at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC until March 29. Digitally rendered reproductions of Kuujus’s weavings are on display beside their physical counterparts as a means of capturing Indigenous stories with new technology.
Jaad Kuujus (Meghann O’Brien) with her mother Tsamtsaka (Dixie Johnston), 1983. Photo by Dianna Hayes
The exhibition gets its title from an eponymous weaving, a T-shirt made of mountain goat wool and yellow cedar bark. The use of traditional materials here points to matrilineal strength, while the T-shirt—a hyper-commercialized item—cleverly raises dialogue around mass-produced garments.
Mountain goat wool becomes a key part of the exhibition, one piece within it called Clouds showing the midway point in how raw shorn fleece is transformed into yarn. Other works display the material as finished products, such as the series “The Burden of Being an Echo”—five robes made through a digital Jacquard weaving process.
Then there are pieces that draw on Kuujus’s training, like a historical Chilkat apron re-creation called The Spirit of Shape (shown above), which applies skills she learned as an apprentice under Ts’msyen weaver Tsamiianbaan (William White).
The entirety of Jaad Kuujus: Everyone Says I Look Like My Mother is encompassed by curved petal-pink softwalls made of pleated textile material—a lush installation by Todd MacAllen and Stephanie Forsythe of the celebrated local design studio molo.
For those planning to check out the exhibition this week, the Museum of Anthropology’s holiday hours are December 31 from 10 am to 2 pm and January 1 from 10 am to 9 pm. Regular operating hours resume January 2. 
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