To kick off the fall term at Green River College, the Helen S. Smith Gallery will open Aisha Harrison's exhibition How it's Held on Sept. 25. The exhibition runs through Nov. 8 and will feature a closing reception and artist talk from noon to 1 p.m. on Nov. 8. Aisha Harrison has roots in Olympia, WA going back four generations. She studied abroad in Spain during high school, prompting her to be a Spanish major as an undergraduate. She loved studying Latin American literature because of the ways in which the Indigenous people used Spanish stories and images, subverting them and intertwining them with their own to ensure that Indigenous peoples, images and stories survived. These camouflaged acts of resistance reminded her of ways that she navigates being of African American and European American mixed heritage in predominantly European American spaces. "How and what does my positioning allow me to see? Continually awakening to reality causes me to question the ways that reality has affected my life, ways that I didn't understand until now. And there are so many other things that I still don't understand. And will never understand. And yet the grief, not for my role in things, although I do feel that, but the grief that what my ancestors have gone through and done, in some ways isn't enough. Will it ever be enough? How can I use my skills, what can I do to further the dreams of my ancestors, my descendants? What can I do to make the world better for my son? And what do I do with the grief? How can I connect to the forces that my ancestors connected to? How can I deal with the fear? How did they deal with the fear? How did they find so much courage? What do I do with thoughts and emotions when I think about the ways in which my life is both incredibly safe and at the same time threatened?" - Aisha Harrison Harrison's work today, as both an artist and arts educator, attempts to navigate the spaces between, centering through making things with your hands, to create personal symbolic imagery, and to encourage others to subvert dominant narratives by telling their stories in hidden and/or overt ways. The Helen S. Smith Gallery is located across the hall from the Holman Library on the Green River College main campus and is open 7am-4pm. Green River College 12401 SE 320th St. Auburn, Wa 98092 [cid:image003.jpg@01D451C3.E3291520] Privilege , paper, ink, 2017, 6"x8" Sarah Dillon Gilmartin Fine Art Faculty Helen S. Smith Gallery Director 253/833-9111, ext. 4213