Pictured above:
Wild Persistence
2026 = Rocks, sticks, feathers, leaves, beads, other found objects, pins, glue, thread, canvas cloth, and styrofoam
Before modern institutions formalized patriarchal structures of power, elder women often held significant advisory roles within many communities. I think the fight for equality continues to be driven by a natural remembrance of a balance that once existed. What felt wrong under judicial or legislative law repeatedly settled in the pit of stomachs, shaped by a collective forgetting. Strong figures like Ruth Bader Ginsburg emerge to influence change, while also revealing that the pursuit of justice is an evolving process of untangling inherited disconnections that exist beyond one’s awareness.
Her life’s work is an example of steady nature persevering; how a tree can slowly consume a fence or a flower fracturing the concrete above. In coherence with Indigenous cultures, this collar speaks to lived experience and relational knowledge as wisdom, mirroring not only the life of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, but my own—moving through a world she helped shape. Each rock, leaf, feather, and bead carries its own memory, gathered and held within the work.
Instagram: @clarissa.david.art
