The Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California, recently purchased a pair of elaborately beaded Giuseppe Zanotti shoes by fashion designer Jamie Okuma. The pumps are an electrifying red, with ornate beadwork patterns down the length of the shoe and heel. Okuma also recently received the Crocker’s John S. Knudsen Prize, a $25,000 cash prize to the artist, which also funds the museum’s purchase of the shoes, titled No Place Like Home, “Holyulkum.”
Jamie Okuma (Luiseño/Shoshone-Bannock), No Place Like Home, “Holyulkum”, 2018. beadwork on Giuseppe Zanotti shoes, 9 x 3½ x 9¼” (each shoe). Crocker Art Museum, John S. Knudsen Endowment Fund, 2018.89.
According to Okuma, the title No Place Like Home, “Holyulkum” honors her ancestral land—dubbed “the hole” by her family—as well as her clan the Wassuk. The red pigment of the shoes, she explains, are influenced by Dorothy’s iconic sparkling shoes in The Wizard of Oz. “I’ve often described my beaded footwear as self-portraits. These are no exception,” says the artist. “My love of pop culture, couture fashion, family, home, Native culture. It’s all here.”
The work will appear in the Crocker Art Museum’s fall exhibition When I Remember I See Red: American Indian Art and Activism in California.
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