Last Updated on November 10, 2023, 9:40 PM | Published: November 10, 2023
The newest, massive-scale exhibition at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art is a staggering, encompassing, and creatively narrative work marrying the deepest cultural heritage and folklore with an immersive, modernist presentation arguably beyond anything OKCMOA has seen before.
Opening Saturday, November 11th, groundbreaking Tlingit artist Preston Singletary’s “Raven and the Box of Daylight” combines intricate glasswork sculpture with boundary-pushing video and audio accompaniment to engulf visitors in the story of Yéil, a white raven that stole the box of daylight and gave the Sun to the world.
Creation Story
The tale of Yéil and his quest to bring daylight to the creatures of the Earth is one of the most sacred and honored creation stories of the Tlingit, the Indigenous peoples of the far northwestern coasts and islands in what is now Alaska.
Singletary, a Native Tlingit glasswork sculptor and musician, says that all of his work tends to stem from the stories and legends of the Tlingit.
“Everything that I do relates back to some kind of story or mythology or figure within the culture,” he told Free Press following a preview of the exhibition at OKCMOA. “It came with an understanding of the stories and who Raven was and all of these adventures, because any action within the story, I feel, is an opportunity to represent that in an art piece.”
The show’s earliest pieces depicting Yéil’s transformation into a human form and his escape with the sun inside of his beak were sculpted nearly a full decade before the rest of the exhibit’s pieces, long before he was encouraged to tackle the entire mythological narrative through his artwork.
“What gave me the idea to do this story in this way, as sort of an immersive installation, was working with a Tlingit elder who considered himself a mythologist,” Singletary said. “I would pair his stories up with objects that I had made, and it gave us the idea to do this exhibition. I really wanted to work with him on it, but then he passed away in 2013.”
The whole exhibition, Singletary told us, is his tribute to that elder, Walter Porter, and his teachings.
Immersion
Rather than simply telling the story of Yéil to visitors or presenting a more straightforward exhibit of objects and artworks inspired by the tale, Singletary wanted to immerse guests in the narrative world using sound, color, lighting, video, and even strategic walls and entryways to obscure each next chapter.
OKCMOA curators and designers have taken particular care to preserve that immersion, even forgoing the customary guided tour for media in favor of letting the work speak for itself and weave its story only through the art and presentation alone.
The result is breathtaking.
The sounds of raven calls, babbling water, village scenes, and more, underlined by soft, ambient music or ominous tonal shades bring you closer to the emotional core of the work than any simple explanation could.
The beautifully and judiciously employed video projection elements add movement and dimension and sometimes even vital context, highlighting both the sheer, world-changing power of the items that Yéil seeks and the delicate environment of the coastal, oceanic world of the Tlingit clans.
“It really is a collaboration with [multimedia artist and exhibition co-designer] Juniper Shuey,” Singletary said. “He was able to bring that sense of a sort of mystic place, to create elements of transformation and give it that little bit of life.”
Strength and Fragility
The glass, however, is always the star of the show.
OKCMOA is well-known for its outstanding glass art collection, stemming from the world-class Dale Chihuly exhibition and bolstered last year with the acquisition of the wildly diverse Rose Family Glass Collection, selections from which are on display alongside “Raven.”
But Singletary’s glasswork is something noticeably different, not quite so liquid as Chihuly’s pieces or as brutalist and textured as much of the Rose Family Collection.
Singletary’s glass can only be described as remarkably organic and shockingly, believably human.
The show’s many characters and figures – both human and creature – have personality and proportion and organically rounded curvature, as if smoothed naturally by water and erosion over time.
The tools, boxes, and household items seem impossibly strong and solid. The full-sized red-and-black canoe early in the exhibit belies any belief that it’s crafted from something as delicate or fragile as glass.
The mind begs to see all of these items as genuine, ancient artifacts, dug out of the ground after millennia, and the humanistic figures as translucent spirits bound through time to them and to the stories they tell.
The glass only appears in its delicate, fragile state as water, in the thin, blue segments comprising the Nass River or the crystal clear, impossibly beautiful water droplet frozen in the time at the tip of a feather, Yéil himself disguised as a speck of dirt inside.
‘A Universal Story’
All of these elements – the sculpture, the textural audio, the subtly morphing, environmental video projection – come together to form something immediately fresh and groundbreaking for OKCMOA, certainly ranking among the very best exhibitions in the museum’s history, and likely in the city’s as well.
But that’s not just because of the artwork alone, but because of its ability to craft and weave such a deeply emotional, surprisingly timely narrative in a stunningly creative and rapturously beautiful way.
“It really is kind of a universal story, as if we all arrived in the same way, but from a different place,” Singletary said. “We stare up in the night sky, and we all have that sense of wonder. The world is in darkness, and Raven brings the light.”
Information
“Preston Singletary: Raven and the Box of Daylight” opens Saturday, November 11th at 10 AM at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art.
Note: A problem with a water line break earlier in the week has been repaired and the museum will open on time Saturday.
For museum hours, tickets, and more information, visit okcmoa.com.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
