Indigenous artist Mona Cliff has artwork spread out across Kansas City. Her pieces can be seen at the Kemper Museum, the Kansas City Airport and Haskell Indian Nations University.
"I wanted to celebrate the vibrancy of our culture," Cliff says. "I wanted to be able to have other Natives come into these spaces and see parts that they understand."
With materials like beads, fabric, raw pieces of tree and beeswax, she places hundreds of thousands of beads to create her work.
Learning beadwork from her grandmother, she hopes to continue the cycle of generational knowledge about this practice and teach her two daughters.
"The foundation of the work that I do is this knowledge carried by women through generations," said Cliff.
Her artwork at the Kemper Museum was picked for the exhibit "New Worlds: Women to Watch 2024" at the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington D.C., where it can be seen until August 11.
Mona will be speaking at the Kemper on Wednesday, July 31st at 6 p.m.
- Mona Cliff, multidisciplinary artist
