DENVER — It’s remarkable that the experience of an exhibit comprised entirely of contemporary Indigenous art is remarkable in 2023, but the fact is that those exhibits are just getting started. Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photographyon view at the Denver Art Museum through May 22, is a rare traveling exhibition of Indigenous artists, conceived and staged at Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, prior to its current location. Co-curated by John Rohrbach from artist Amon Carter and Diné Will Wilson, the show is divided into three distinct conceptual sections (accompanied by a prologue): Survival, Nation and Indigenous Visualities. Each section examines what it means to be an Indigenous artist working today.
The notion of audience is palpable here, especially in the first section, Survival, which brings together the works of almost half of the exhibition list. Survival is a concept articulated for the first time in an Aboriginal sense by Gerald Vizenor, an Anishinaabe scholar who understood the term to mean a continuation of Indigenous stories that share the qualities of renunciation of domination, tragedy, and victimhood. Survivance’s images position the heirs of settler culture as the recipients of historical and cultural reckoning while addressing an Indigenous audience with a more subtle message: we are now reclaiming our own representation. The 16 artists use humour, shock and mundane facts, often simultaneously, in their work.
Erica Lordthe single-channel video of “red man(2005), memorably and audaciously addresses these two different audiences. Two women, one Caucasian, one Native, face each other against a white background. Noelle Masona white artist, sings and directs a racist campfire song, once popularized at Cub and Brownie troop rallies. As she mimes wearing “feathers in our headbands” and fighting with bows and arrows, Lord slaps her in the face, staining it with red paint. With each slap, Mason recovers and starts again, as paint builds up on his face. At the end of the four-minute play, Mason confronts the viewer literally with “red face” as well as nosebleed, watery eyes. She then defiantly sings the song to the end, with renewed enthusiasm. Though simply performed and conceptualized, the work stuns by commenting on so many complicated strands of what it’s like to be altered, with the “health” of the children’s camp song being anything but. As it centers white arrogance, it offers what response the songwriters and singers deserve from the people the songs are about.
Rewriting and reframing history takes a comedic and literal twist with Larry McNeil“Tonto’s TV Script Revision” (2009), in which Sheriff Tonto punishes Richard Pratt, the founder of the Carlisle Indian Residential School, plunging his face into a basin of water. Inspired by prison designs, the boarding school was one of many boarding schools that abused and indoctrinated Indigenous children, advocating a platform of assimilation. Pictures of Carlisle’s resident children and a photo of the artist himself are framed on the wall behind this scene, functioning as a conscious reminder of the consequences of Pratt’s sins. Shan GoshornThe sculpture from “Remaining a Child” (2017), also speaks of Carlisle’s infamous installation, using a Cherokee basket in the shape of a “coffin” made of bone x-rays, vellum and artificial tendon. The handwritten names of the children buried in Carlisle Cemetery wrap around the top and bottom of the basket, and the “mountain” basket design connects the children to their home countries. THE body of 215 resident children from the school were discovered buried in eight cemeteries on school grounds.
Nation, the second chapter of the exhibition, speaks of the long history of military service to which Indigenous peoples have submitted, particularly in Tom Jonesthe photographic series of Ho-Chunk Veterans. The images feature what Jones calls “memorial postsfor each deceased service member, each consisting of a framed photograph of the tribesman as well as a small bowl of offerings, including their favorite brands of cigarettes, lighters and other ephemera. The title “Nation” also refers to sovereign and distinct Indigenous nations, movingly communicated in Alain Michelsonthe video “Mespat” (2001). Projected onto a laboriously constructed screen of turkey feathers, the camera continuously pans along the 3.5-mile coastline of Newtown Creek, an estuary separating Brooklyn and Queens. Mespat refers to a passage along the known route of the Native Lenape as a “place of bad water”, and from where they were moved by European settlers in 1642. Ambient sound accompanies the video, giving the sensation of ourselves floating along the waters, watching the cityscape change and rotate in real time.
The final section, Indigenous Visualities, is a celebration of self-representation. The works here depict how distinct and varied these ideas of cropped representations are – as varied as the 15 nations featured. A painterly and beautifully introspective star is the Cree artist Kimowan Metchewais“Cold Lake” undated. Layered with photographs, rust and tobacco stained paper and “Atakamew-Sakihikan” – the Cree name for the Cold Lake First Nations reserve in Alberta, Canada, written in Western Cree syllabics – the room hums with communion and the calm of dawn. Unique from the other works on display, “Cold Lake” does not perform the act of speaking to multiple audiences at once, with different messages for each. expressing the quality of visual sovereigntyit beckons with a benediction signal, beckoning all to enter.
Speaking with Light: Contemporary Indigenous Photography continues at the Denver Art Museum (100 West 14th Avenue Parkway, Denver, Colorado) through May 22. The exhibition was curated by John Rohrbach of the Amon Carter Museum of American Art and Navajo/Diné artist and curator Will Wilson.
