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RED: A Haida Manga – The Limited Edition Box Set

RED: A Haida Manga Limited Edition Box Set:

The limited edition set of 18 prints is printed on high quality paper, with hand-torn edges. Print set is hand-signed by the artist, and has been color-matched to the original watercolor. The full set comes in a handsome archival box and a RED book. Dimensions listed are for each print. Please call for details.

(These prints are also sold as 18 separate open edition giclee prints, each sold separately. Artist signature is reproduced, printed on Arches Smooth Paper. Each print is 16.7″h x 21.25″h. $125 USD per print. See here.)

Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas (Haida) is known for pioneering the hybrid “Haida Manga” style. “Manga” are Japanese-style comics that developed out of ancient caricatures, illuminated scrolls, brocade prints, and were influenced by the arrival of American and European comics after World War II. Yahgulanaas’ hyper-kinetic drawings combine the bold lines of traditional Northwest Coast design and the narrative form of manga, to retell the family legends in a genre-bending, mind-twisting way. The combination of these two cross-Pacific cultural artforms is an exhilarating and successful genre pairing that he has explored across multiple media.

Yahgulanaas’ masterpiece is the 18-panel, 15ft long narrative mural, RED. Painted in 2009, RED was the culmination of two years of storyboarding and three months of painting. Yahgulanaas’ art is chameleonic throughout, showing tell-tale influences from Hokusai to Eisner, MAD Magazine to Edenshaw to Picasso.

The plot is based on a story from Yahgulanaas’ family. Red and Jaada are orphans growing up on Haida Gwaii. When Jaada is captured by raiders from another village, Red swears to recover her. Red becomes leader of his village, but can think of nothing but his missing sister, and brings his people to the brink of war and disaster in his quest for revenge.

Yahgulanaas made his formal American debut in 2015, with a solo exhibit at Stonington Gallery, displaying RED at SAM, and having work enter the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Limited and open edition prints of RED are available through Stonington Gallery. A book form of RED is available through booksellers.

The 18 prints are shown linked up in the first image, the black framelines revealing the overall design of a Haida crest figure. The second image shows all of the open edition prints installed together on a wall. (The prints in this Ltd Edition Box Set are larger, with different edges.)