Trust Me

As a teenager, Dakota Mace discovered that an allergy to silver not only would prevent her from practicing her family’s trade (silversmithing) but also from adopting the artistic technique of gelatin silver printing, the process used for most black-and-white photography. This sensitivity led her to the experimental approach to artmaking that she is known for: combining beadwork, embroidery, and other craft traditions with alternative photographic processes like the chemigram—in which images are made without the use of a camera by painting chemicals directly onto light-sensitive paper. In the Béésh Łigaii series, the artist pays homage to the significance of the number four in Diné culture as a symbol for the interconnectedness of all things, and to the silversmithing designs passed down through generations of her family. In this particular work, Mace abstracts those designs to honor bonds of kinship and ancestry, while also making her own unique contribution to this lineage as a visual artist.