Weeping Willow Women by Raven Halfmoon

This monumental ceramic work pays tribute to the artist’s Caddo Nation ancestors and ancestral techniques. The dark chocolate clay reflects the homeland of the Caddo where they have sourced clay for thousands of years. The work fuses Caddo ceramic traditions with studio ceramic techniques and has been realised using the hand-built coil method, an impressive technical accomplishment at this scale. Six heads feature in the work, three emerging on each side, with one side glazed in cream and the other in red, a reference to both the Oklahoma soil and other important Indigenous issues, such as the murder of Indigenous women. Expressive impressions of the artist’s hands can be seen across the work’s surface, and it is finished with contrasting black and red gestural mark-making that references Caddo symbols used in pottery, tattooing and other cultural items.