Honoring Modern Unidentified .3, Gina Adams

For her Honoring Modern Unidentified series, Gina Adams responded to the anonymous ways that many Native peoples are represented in museum collections. Adams’s work honors the unknown makers, as well as the countless other Native peoples whose names, cultural identities, and homelands have been lost because of colonialism and oppression. For these works Adams etched Native beadwork designs from the Spencer’s collection onto ceramic basketballs. Originally taught at boarding schools as part of assimilation attempts, basketball has since been reappropriated by Native communities and is now viewed as a source of resistance, opportunity, and means for survival.
Adams states:
“The form of the basketball was specifically chosen for many reasons. First and foremost, James Naismith was the University of Kansas’s first basketball coach. Second, Naismith pioneered the KU basketball program, which today has become an athletic enterprise. Nearby, Haskell Indian Nations University was once a Native American Bureau of Indian Affairs Children’s Boarding School. Today, Haskell is one of the only four-year accredited Native American colleges in the United States, and continues the Naismith tradition, with a strong basketball program for Native athletes. For many Native Americans, basketball, as well as many other sports, is considered an extremely viable way towards survival, both monetarily and physically. It is also a way to achieve excellent educational opportunities through athletic scholarships. Choosing the basketball to make a ceramic cast was deliberate; I wanted to bring the game into these post-colonial issues. The ceramic body represents the idea of craft that would have been passed down to me by my ancestors, were their way of life and well-being not purposely divided and conquered. To ancient peoples, clay was a means of survival; here I purposely use it to signify survival that continues, despite the Dawes Act and the assimilation practices that occurred.”

For her Honoring Modern Unidentified series, Gina Adams responded to the anonymous ways that many Native peoples are represented in museum collections. Adams’s work honors the unknown makers, as well as the countless other Native peoples whose names, cultural identities, and homelands have been lost because of colonialism and oppression. For these works Adams etched Native beadwork designs from the Spencer’s collection onto ceramic basketballs. Originally taught at boarding schools as part of assimilation attempts, basketball has since been reappropriated by Native communities and is now viewed as a source of resistance, opportunity, and means for survival.
Adams states:
“The form of the basketball was specifically chosen for many reasons. First and foremost, James Naismith was the University of Kansas’s first basketball coach. Second, Naismith pioneered the KU basketball program, which today has become an athletic enterprise. Nearby, Haskell Indian Nations University was once a Native American Bureau of Indian Affairs Children’s Boarding School. Today, Haskell is one of the only four-year accredited Native American colleges in the United States, and continues the Naismith tradition, with a strong basketball program for Native athletes. For many Native Americans, basketball, as well as many other sports, is considered an extremely viable way towards survival, both monetarily and physically. It is also a way to achieve excellent educational opportunities through athletic scholarships. Choosing the basketball to make a ceramic cast was deliberate; I wanted to bring the game into these post-colonial issues. The ceramic body represents the idea of craft that would have been passed down to me by my ancestors, were their way of life and well-being not purposely divided and conquered. To ancient peoples, clay was a means of survival; here I purposely use it to signify survival that continues, despite the Dawes Act and the assimilation practices that occurred.”