Raven Halfmoon

Raven Halfmoon: Flags of Our Mothers

Halfmoon’s practice spans torso-scaled and colossal-sized glazed stoneware sculptures that reference stories of the Caddo Nation, specifically relating to her feminist lineage and the power of its complexities. With a strong visual presence that opposes existing stereotypes and biases, these monuments honor her Caddo Nation ancestors and their traditions, as well as the elders who taught her about ceramics when she was a teenager.

Inspired by ancient Indigenous pottery, from the Olmec heads in Mexico to the Moai statues on Easter Island to the earth mounds constructed by her ancestors, Halfmoon fuses Caddo pottery traditions, which were created and maintained mostly by women, with more contemporary gestures, such as tagging her work in reference to Caddo tattooing and ancient pottery motifs.

For this exhibition, Halfmoon was commissioned by Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts and The Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum to create some of her largest works to date. These include Flagbearer, a three-part stacked ceramic sculpture that stands over twelve feet tall.

Primarily working in portraiture, Halfmoon handbuilds each sculpture using a coil method. Her surfaces are expressive, showing deep finger impressions and dramatic dripping glazes—a physicality that presents her as both maker and matter. Her color palette matches the clay bodies she selects and the glazes she fires with—reds after the Oklahoma soil and the blood of murdered Indigenous women, blacks for the clay of the Red River, and buff creams. Oftentimes, she stacks and repeats imagery, creating totemic forms that represent herself and her maternal ancestry while also referencing the multiplicities that exist inside all of us.