The REDress Project Exhibition

From March 1 to March 17, 2024, the MSU Museum and its campus partners will host the REDress Project, an evocative art installation that spotlights the crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. This striking exhibition features approximately 60 red dresses suspended along West Circle Drive in public spaces near the MSU Museum and Beal Botanical Garden, symbolizing the haunting absence and powerful presence of these women and girls.

Indigenous women in Canada and the United States endure disproportionately high rates of violence. The REDress Project provides a platform for the voices of families affected by Murdered and Missing Indigenous Persons (MMIP), their allies, and advocates. Since its inception in 2009 at the University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, with over a hundred dresses, the REDress Project has been showcased in more than 50 locations across Canada and internationally. Notable displays include the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C., and a permanent exhibition at The Canada Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg, Manitoba. This exhibition at Michigan State University continues this journey, inviting reflection, dialogue, and action in the ongoing struggle for the rights and protection of Indigenous women and girls.

Artist’s Bio
Jaime Black-Morsette is a Red River Métis artist and activist living and working on their home territory near the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.

Founder of The REDress Project in 2009, Black-Morsette has been using their art practice as a way to gather community and create action and change around the epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls across Turtle Island and beyond for over 13 years. Black-Morsette’s interdisciplinary art practice includes immersive film and video, installation art, photography and performance art practices to explore themes of memory, identity, place and resistance.

Gallery