Epiphany Couch: In the Name of Progress
On View: October 4th โ November 15th, 2025
Opening Reception: October 4th , 5-8pm
Artist Talk / Closing Reception: November 16th, noon-3pm
Hours: Thursday โ Saturday, noon-5pm
Epiphany Couch, E Pluribus Unum, mix media, 16โณ x 12โณ x 1.5โณ, 2024
โProgressโ has long been invoked to justify the displacement, devastation, and assimilation of Indigenous people. In the United States, Native people were confined to reservations and subjected to policies that broke apart communal lands, seperating families into private parcels. Government-run boarding schools took Native children from their homes in the pursuit of assimilation. Forced adoption programs, bans on language and ceremony, and later termination policies sought to dissolve tribal nations altogether.
At the center of this exhibition are two national symbols: the American flag and the first motto of the United States, E Pluribus Unum, or โOut of many, one.โ Both are meant to unify, yet for many Native people they instead represent promises never fully kept. The flag can be a threat or a form of protection, while the motto suggests belonging even as laws and policies continue to enforce exclusion.
Through beadwork, family images, archival documents, and Americana objects, Couch examines these symbols in relation to her own family history, spanning from the Allotment and Assimilation Era to the present. Her familyโs stories serve as an entry point, revealing how national ideals of unity and progress intersected with personal experiences of survival, adaptation, and resilience. The work does not seek to offer resolution; instead, it probes, asking: What has progress cost? Who has it served? And what does it mean to belong in a nation built on contradictions? It reminds us that truth exists across a spectrum and that progress, far from neutral, has always been contested.
Epiphany Couch (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer whose work explores generational knowledge, storytelling, and our relationships with the natural and spiritual worlds. Working across photography, beadwork, weaving, and collage, she reinterprets traditional forms to create images, installations, and sculptural works that engage ancestral knowledge and invite new ways of understanding. Her practice is rooted in unconventional collaborationโacross time, between generations, and with the natural worldโrecognizing these relationships as vital to sustaining memory, culture, and identity.
Couchโs work transforms personal and collective histories into heirloom-like objects that hold space for reflection, care, and healing. Drawing from family stories, archival research, her own dreams, and her childhood in calษลali (Tacoma, Washington), she creates work that is both intimate and expansive, blurring the line between artifact and art.
As a spuyalษpabลก (Puyallup), Yakama, and Scandinavian/mixed European artist, Couch centers cultural knowledge and community connection in both her process and presentation. In 2024, she was a commissioned artist for Oregonโs Percent for Art in Public Places, a featured artist in the Oregon Contemporary Artistsโ Biennial, and a Ford Family Foundationโs Oregon Visual Artist Studios at MASS MoCA resident. Her work has been acquired for public collections and exhibited in museums, galleries, and art fairs across the United States. Couch lives and works in Portland, Oregon, where she is a 2025 GLEAN Program artist-in-residence and a member of the artist-run gallery Carnation Contemporary.
Inventory and price list available by request at souvenirartspdx@gmail.com
This exhibition is supported by the Regional Arts & Culture Council as well as the Oregon Cultural Trust through the Multnomah County Cultural Coalition.