Background
Yazzie was born and raised in Lupton, Arizona. Her mother was an extremely important figure in her life growing up, and she later inspired Yazzie in her artworks.
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Jolene Nenibah Yazzie
Edit ProfileEducation
Afterwords, she attended the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
Career
She went on to earn her Bachelor of Arts in graphic design from Collins College. As a child, she had trouble finding women superheroes in the comics that she liked to read, aside from Wonder Woman. Navajo art and the art of storytelling is a major foundation in Yazzie"s works.
Because of the similarities of telling a narrative story in both comics and traditional Navajo art, the ability to combine the two is possible.
According to Yazzie, many of the Navajo creation stories are similar to superhero stories in our current popular culture. Yazzie"s sister had suffered sexual abuse in the past, and everyone in her family had decided to cover up the incident.
Her mother had also worked in a battered women"s shelter, and both of these experiences had a profound impact on Yazzie"s outlook on women in her art The women in her artwork are meant to reflect her mother and the other strong women figures in her life.
Yazzie wanted to create strong and powerful female figure that would be the type that someone could look at and look up to, along with helping inspire their own inner strength.
The largest exhibition that her artwork was featured in, Comic Art Indigene, was displayed in the National Museum of the American Indian in Washington Doctorate. C. Yazzie"s work was used for much of the publicity materials for the show.
