Demian DinéYazhi´ is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) and Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). This piece is a response to their most recent self-published poem WE LEFT THEM NOTHING requested by the artist.

In the artist's words, the book "is the aftermath of witnessing - is the afterbirth of disruption - is the kindling seeking new worlds not out of sheer boredom but borne out of sheer necessity. If Indigenous spirituality is rooted in survival—and time is but a record of the many apocalypses we’ve survived—then WE LEFT THEM NOTHING is an endangered document resulting from the failures of settler colonialism and hetero cis gender supremacy. Short of celebration and still in the throes of unraveling and unsettling and undressing collective manipulation still unable to articulate our own Decolonial awakening but desperate as fuck to channel some sacred cosmological magic to restore the balance before sabotaged extinction."

What did you bring? 20” x 30”, 2021, letterpress print collaged with digitally typeset original text written in ekphrastic response to “WE LEFT THEM NOTHING” by Demian DinéYazhi´