CitizenM’s highly anticipated Seattle Pioneer Square Hotel unveils stunning mural ahead of official opening
This month, citizenM – the Dutch lifestyle hotel brand – unveils a mural on the facade of its highly anticipated Seattle Pioneer Square location which is slated to open in the second quarter of 2022. As the brand’s second property in Seattle, after citizenM Seattle South Lake Union which opened in 2020, citizenM Seattle Pioneer Square brings much-awaited new life to one of the city’s most historic and quirky neighborhoods. CitizenM’s new presence in Pioneer Square highlights a milestone for the historic lot. Originally home to Seattle’s first sawmill, the corner lot will now represent the neighborhood’s evolution into one of the nation’s premier cultural and arts districts. citizenM mural by RYAN! Elizabeth Feddersen, called Diagramcaptures the diversity, energy and history of the place.
Diagram is a large-scale graphic mural that features an abstract map depicting layers of Seattle’s history and idiosyncrasies. Composed in a vibrant grid, the artwork engages the aesthetic structure and color palette of turn-of-the-century Native American beadwork. Abstract and symbolic imagery overlays and contrasts the stories, events and systems that are quintessential to Pioneer Square’s early history. It touches on colonization, nature, industry, politics, town planning and ideologies. The imagery particularly focuses on choices and events that have lasting effects, illustrating how plans made today shape both physical and experiential life tomorrow.
Washington native artist RYAN! Feddersen creates interactive murals, site-specific installations, and immersive public artworks that invite public engagement and interrogate official histories to examine how people’s thoughts were formed by the information they were taught. . Diagram for citizenMis one of many pieces she has created across North America, previously working with the Seattle Office of Arts and Culture, the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History, the Museum of art from Seattle, etc.
“Diagram very much represents a mode for the way I like to work,” says Feddersen. “It’s time to dive into research and think site-specifically about stories and narratives, and then the freedom to combine that content with aesthetic, ideological, and strategic ways of working.”
Feddersen worked for 10 years in Seattle as an artist, curator, studio assistant and arts administrator, and recently moved to Tacoma where she creates multimedia projects using traditional Plateau storytelling applied to contemporary issues, historical research and digital tools. She has curated exhibitions for the New Burke Museum, the Museum of Northwest Art, and the Center for Contemporary Native Art at the Portland Art Museum.
As with all of its hotels, citizenM Seattle Pioneer Square aims to bring art to the community through commissioned and existing works. citizenM consulted 4Culture – King County’s cultural funding agency and steward of its public art collection – to commission Diagram and curating a variety of artwork by Seattle artists for the hotel’s interior spaces. The facade mural is just the first piece of a larger portfolio that will give the new property a distinctive art collection from the region. A second commissioned piece – a wallpaper by Seattle-based artist Harold Hollingsworth – will be featured in the hotel bar. In the living room, cabinets have been designed to showcase a vibrant third piece, titled The Allure, by Anthony White, a Seattle-based artist and curator. Indoor artwork will include pieces by Natalie Krick, Mary Iverson and Jennifer Zwick.
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