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Resonance of Things Unseen
Indigenous Sovereignty, Institutional Accession, and Private Correspondence
By Emily Velez Nelms
April–December 2024
Artist Emily Velez Nelms’ exhibition Resonance of Things Unseen: Indigenous Sovereignty, Institutional Accession, and Private Correspondence, which ran from April 2024 through December 2024, transforms the papers of former Peabody curator William Sturtevant into artist prints. His research focused on the physical, medicinal, and cultural knowledge of the Seminole and Miccosukee people, whose tribal homelands are in southern Florida. He deeply depended on his relationship with elder Josie Bille, the sole Miccosukee Seminole who would engage with him.
Etched in yellow flypaper and dotted with mosquitos from the Florida wetlands, Sturtevant’s letters are displayed alongside an architectural blueprint from “The Jungle Queen,” the oldest running tourist attraction in Florida and a site where he acquired objects. This installation considers the often-hidden figure of the anthropologist/curator, and how institutions have historically used Indigenous knowledge as content for academic research and exhibitions.
Through the presentation of primary sources, a microcosm of relations between Floridian First Nations, the University, and the economy of tourism and development, Nelms’ exhibition serves as a singular case study for the larger pervasive and historical violation of institutional extraction and display.
Emily Velez Nelms is known for works that acknowledge the gaze of the viewer. Her practice is often rooted in histories of southern Florida, incorporating installation, film, sound, and architectural processes. Through her practice, Velez Nelms examines how social structures shape spatial realities, scenes of domesticity, and infrastructure, while intentionally resisting disciplinary boundaries.
During her Masters of Environmental Design at the Yale School of Architecture, she developed ‘Domestic Exotic’, a critical examination of the of impact cultural tourism on the urban development of her home region, southern Florida. Using Florida as a case study, she details a history of racial performance and its connections to more contemporary attractions such as the Hard Rock Casino chain and Disney’s Epcot.
Velez Nelms has been a Studio Fellow at Whitney Independent Study Program (2024), and an Artist-in-Residence at Skowhegan (2018), MASS MoCA (2023), and the International Sculpture Center (2016). She recently served as the coordinator for the Yale Group for the Study of Native America and has been nominated as a 2025 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellow. Velez Nelms holds an MFA from UCLA (2019).
The Cyrus Cylinder
March–June 2024
This inscribed clay cylinder, on loan from the British Museum, is sometimes called “the first charter of human rights,” and was on display at the Yale Peabody Museum during its 2024 reopening.
The piece, named after King Cyrus I, founder of the Persian Empire, was excavated in 1879 by Mosul-born archaeologist and diplomat Hormuzd Rassam, who sent it to the British Museum in London. Another small piece, donated to Yale University in 1922 by James B. Nies, was later reunited with the London fragment once researchers realized that the two were related. The pieces are usually on display together at the British Museum.