Colleen Mulvey

Bio

Colleen Mulvey is involved in SFAI on many levels including acting as co-chair of The Legion of Graduate Students from 2006-2007. Colleen is from Buffalo NY, involved in The Arts Council of Buffalo as well as an AmeriCorps volunteer. She holds a BFA in photography from The College of St Rose in Albany NY and now uses multiple mediums to express her interests in social issues, cultural differences and her personal experiences within these categories.

Statement

The source location for this project is Bay Street, Emeryville California at Temescal Creek. The Ohlone people populated the land, trading, living, raising families and burying their dead for nearly 5,000 years. Upon learning of the Ohlone People buried at the Shellmound, Emeryville I felt compelled to make work about it. This site, with bodies dating 4,500 years back is an archeological gem but instead of being treated as such, there is a pedestrian mall built directly on top of the ancient burial ground. The design of Bay Street ensured that as few bodies as possible would be disturbed but still 300 bodies were uncovered during construction and reburied in an unmarked mass grave, onsite. Archeologists estimate that hundreds more remain under ground beneath the retail site. A memorial installed to acknowledge the shell mound culture bears no mention of the burials grounds so I wanted to acknowledge the remaining unknown Ohlone underneath the mall structure. Victoria's secret is the building of focus for this book because there are several clusters of thirty or more bodies underneath. Not wanting to exploit the burial grounds I decided to pay my personal respects to the people. Viewing the building as the only grave marker, I made rubbings of the surface in honor of the site and the Native Ohlone buried beneath. Each individual image of the Victoria's Secret storefront is a tribute to the unknown Ohlone buried together beneath the stone. It became a personal meditation, not meant to erase the past wrongdoing or even pass judgment but to simply acknowledge and pay respect to an important culture that were the first inhabitants of California.