Artist Amber Webb is a Yup’ik artist/activist from Dillingham, Alaska. After graduating from UAA with a BA in woven fibers with a minor in history in 2013, she worked industrial jobs while she designed apparel featuring Yup’ik language in solidarity with language reclamation efforts. In 2018, she was awarded a Rasmuson Foundation Individual Project Award for a 12 ft qaspeq to honor MMIWG in North America. Her work visually explores the effects of colonization and the evolution and strength of indigenous people after genocide and intergenerational trauma through portraiture and textiles. She is exploring pictorial Yup’ik storytelling to communicate contemporary stories of oppression, historic trauma, resilience, humor, changing climate, motherhood, and resistance. Amber was Choggiung Ltd. Shareholder citizen of the year, Bristol Bay Native Corporation Citizen of the year and also received the Walter Sobeleff Warrior of Light award from Alaska Federation of Natives in 2019.
Her most recent work, the Qaspeq Project, has been featured on KTUU, KTVA, First Alaskans Magazine, First Americans Magazine, in the Juneau Empire, and most recently on The Tonight Show. The first qaspeq in the series was purchased by the Anchorage Museum. The second qaspeq was funded by the Rasmuson Foundation. It was most recently present for conversations at the annual Alaska Federation of Natives gathering in 2019. The larger qaspeq was also displayed at the state capital building in Juneau, Alaska during testimony for HR 10, a resolution in support of Savannah’s Act, VAWA and increased financial support for law enforcement in rural Alaska.
To see some of her work, see her post, “We are resilient people” on surviving pandemics in rural Alaska.