Carly Treece: Weaving Generational Voices into Cherokee Cultural Memory

By Cherokee 411 Staff

When Cherokee and Mvskoke artist Carly Treece created Generational Voices for the 2024 Ripple in Tradition exhibition, she wasn’t simply making art—she was honoring ancestors, carrying forward memory, and preserving culture through form and story.

As a member of the Four Mothers Collective, Treece is part of a powerful movement of Indigenous women artists who are reclaiming traditional knowledge and reimagining it through contemporary media. Her contribution to Ripple in Tradition stood out not just for its visual impact, but for its deep sense of rootedness in Cherokee ways of knowing.

At the heart of Generational Voices is a question: What do we carry, and how do we listen? The piece layers voice, fabric, and story—inviting viewers into a dialogue that stretches across time. It’s a meditation on the voices that whisper through language, family, and land. In this work, the past is not past—it is actively speaking.

Treece’s work reflects a uniquely Cherokee understanding of cultural continuity, one that embraces oral tradition, matrilineal knowledge, and the responsibility to speak for those who came before us. Through both visual texture and symbolic structure, she reminds us that identity is not something we perform—it is something we inherit, nurture, and pass on.

In an era where Cherokee cultural expression continues to evolve, Treece’s work stands as both an anchor and a compass. Generational Voices doesn’t just tell a story—it embodies one. And in doing so, Carly Treece reminds us of the power of Indigenous art to carry memory, resist erasure, and ignite the next generation of storytellers.