Marie Watt, Skywalker/Skyscraper (Axis Mundi), 2012

Marie Watt: I work with reclaimed blankets that I scavenged from thrift stores. I was interested in working with blankets because in my tribe and in other Indigenous communities, we often give blankets away to honor people for being witness to important life events. 

I'm a citizen of the Seneca nation and our community is located just west of Buffalo, by about forty minutes. When I moved from Portland to Brooklyn, New York, we exchanged the conifers and totem poles of the Pacific Northwest for scaffolding and skyscrapers. And it got me thinking a lot about the Iroquois and Indigenous presence in New York. 

Narrator: Most of New York’s skyscrapers have been built by Iroquois ironworkers, known as skywalkers. 

Marie Watt: I love the the association between a Skywalker being an Iroquois ironworker—an extended member of my family—and relating to Star Wars. I'm interested in Skywalker as a word that refers to this space that seems otherworldly, and mythic, and magical. Even spiritual.  I think that is the space that Skywalkers and skyscrapers occupy. And it's a space that we all are familiar with. And it’s a space that can be sacred, a space that connects us. And when I say connects us, I think of humans, being located at different places around the planet, and yet this Skywalker/Skyscraper space is actually a space that we perhaps look up to. You know, it's occupied by the moon, and stars, and planets, and planes, and weapons. So, it's a space that makes me think.