Kinship Compositions

As a member of the Akwesasne Mohawk Tribe, Margaret Jacobs' culture inspires her to create pieces charged with power, strength, and beauty. Her work celebrates Indigenous culture with a bold, powerful aesthetic. She believes in the importance of objects and their power to relay narratives.

Her artistic practice is motivated by learning, exploration, and growth, along with the compulsion
to create. As an Indigenous artist, Margaret sees her work as a way to reclaim and learn about her
Mohawk culture, values, and ancestral knowledge, as well as a way to learn about her
immediate familial narratives and knowledge.

The viewer is also invited to learn; to break stereotypes and misconceptions about native peoples and to share accurate and contemporary narratives that show native peoples not as something of the past, but as living, thriving, contemporary peoples.

Margaret melds historical narratives with personal narratives so layers of storytelling develop in
my work.

"My 'Old Growth' series intertwines recognizable ironworkers' tools with cultural and familial influential plants and objects found in nature. In this series, I am giving a direct visual reference to the history of the Mohawk high steel workers that built skyscrapers in every US city while simultaneously intermingling plants that remind me of my childhood and family."

Margaret uses steel for her sculpture and powder coated brass in her jewelry, developing organic textures and surfaces. At first, the work is quiet and subdued, but layers emerge the longer a piece is explored. The viewer is gifted the opportunity to participate in the creation of visual narratives of the multiplicity and complexity of human experiences.

Born and raised in northern New York, Margaret Jacobs is an enrolled member of the
Akwesasne Mohawk Tribe. Jacobs is a 2018 awardee from the Rebecca Blunk Fund through
New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA), a 2019 recipient of the Artist in Business
Leadership Award through the First Peoples Fund, and a 2022 United States Artist
Fellowship Nominee.

Jacobs has participated in several artist residencies including at the Institute of American
Indian Arts (IAIA) in Sante Fe, NM, Franconia Sculpture Park in Shafer, MN and the
Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT where she received a Native American Fellowship
through the Harpo Foundation. She has shown her work internationally including shows at
the Boise Art Museum in Idaho; the Fruitlands Museum in Harvard, MA and 516 arts in
Albuquerque, NM. Her work has been featured in print and online press including at
mic.com in the article 11 Native American Artists Whose Work Redefines What it Means to be
American and the Art New England feature, 10 Emerging New England Artists.

Jacobs attended Dartmouth College in Hanover, NH where she graduated with high honors
for her thesis work and received the Perspectives on Design (POD) award. She is a
metalsmith known for her sculpture, jewelry and drawings and she uses all three
approaches to explore the tension and harmony between natural and man-made, often
intermingling unexpected and contradicting materials to explore those relationships.