Susan Hudson

MMIW: The Tree of Many Dresses

MMIW: The Tree of Many Dresses is part of a series of quilts produced by Susan Hudson (Navajo/Diné) to call attention to the epidemic of missing and murdered Indigenous women afflicting her community. The work is especially poignant as it foregrounds the 2016 kidnapping and murder of the artist's eleven-year-old niece through imagery drawn from Hudson’s dreams and prayers. By referencing the interior of mountains, the system of roots beneath the Earth’s surface, and deep geological and ancestral time, the work alludes to the resilience of Indigenous women.