E Pluribus Unum: Dinétah

In September 2016, Axle Contemporary artists Matthew Chase-Daniel and Jerry Wellman traveled to the Navajo Nation and surrounding areas to create the third project in the ongoing series E Pluribus Unum. These projects use their Axle Contemporary mobile artspace as a photographic portrait studio. Over the course of two weeks, they created over 800 studio portraits. In each portrait, the participant holds an object of personal significance. One copy of each photo was distributed to each participant; another was pasted to the exterior of the gallery-studio, and all the portraits were later presented in an exhibition at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Arizona.  A book was published with all of the portraits, essays by the artists and by Navajo Nation Museum director Manuelito Wheeler, and a poem by Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Laura Tohe.