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Anne Mavor Installation: I Am My White Ancestors: Claiming the Legacy of Oppression and Artist Led Workshop: Claim Your People, Understand Your History (Falmouth, Massachusetts): Highfield Hall & Gardens is pleased to announce the September 12, 2023 opening of an installation by Anne Mavor titled I Am My White Ancestors: Claiming the Legacy of Oppression. The exhibit features 13 large-scale panels that address the artist’s family role in the history of race, class, colonization, and genocide. The panels feature life-size photographs of specific ancestors from the artist’s European American history, with accompanying audio diaries which reveal historical events and traumas that shaped each ancestor and contributed to their role in the legacy of oppression. The photographs feature Anne dressed in period clothing against decorative backdrops. The presentation belies the profound content and context of history, yet achieves the artist’s goal when initiating this project with a question to herself “What would it look like to claim my people”? She envisioned the artwork and spent the next few years creating it. Mavor has created ancestors, real and imagined, spanning over 2000 years, from the Celtic Iron Age to the present day. Creating these 84” x 55” panels required Mavor to research and sew the clothing, photograph herself and then design the panels for printing on fabric. The artist deliberately chose to embody each ancestor by incorporating her face as the face of her ancestor to demonstrate her thesis that beliefs pass down through generations like DNA. An associated workshop Claim Your People Understand Your History will be offered on Sunday, September 10, 2023, 12–3:00pm, prior to the public opening, where artist Anne Mavor will lead participants through a transformative exploration of their own genealogical history. Participants will explore the topics of the exhibition from a personal perspective. Register online, Members $20- Non-members $30. Participants are encouraged to view the installation between 12noon -1, formal workshop begins at 1pm – 3pm. Anne Mavor is a visual artist and writer based in Portland Oregon. Her work combines storytelling, research, performance, imagery, and collaboration to illuminate social and personal issues. Mavor uses her own life as source material for content while employing different media, painting, printmaking, book arts, and sculpture. Inspired by topics reflecting the universal human experience, Mavor consistently addresses these issues in her art, sexism, parent and artist oppression, disability, white supremacy, disconnection from place, and home, and illness. Mavor employs different media works in the following media: painting, printmaking, book arts, and sculpture. Originally from Woods Hole, she moved to Los Angeles in 1976 to join the Feminist Studio Workshop at The Woman’s Building where she studied performance. Gallery Hours: Tuesday– Friday, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm Saturday & Sunday 10:00 am – 2:00 pm About Highfield Hall & Gardens The house is a rare surviving example of transitional Stick Style architecture, containing beautiful gardens located in the heart of Falmouth, Massachusetts. It is a unique combination of a historic house, expansive gardens and trails, and a vibrant cultural center. Built in 1878 as the summer home for Boston's Beebe family, the house sits on 5.5 pristine acres surrounded by nearly 400 acres of conservation land and public walking trails. Highfield Hall & Gardens is not your typical historic estate. It is an example of a historic building saved by grassroots community organizing. An effort of tenacity and vision that continues as new research on the structure and its story of the people who lived here add to the building's significance. It offers world-class music, international art exhibitions, culinary classes, family programs, and year-round special events. For more information, visit www.highfieldhallandgardens.org.