INDIGENOUS IDENTITIES: A GREAT ART EXHIBITION
In February, an unprecedented survey of contemporary Native American art curated by Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) opens at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University—New Brunswick.
Indigenous Identities: Here, Now & Always marks the largest curatorial endeavor in the acclaimed artist’s 60-year career and emphasizes her pivotal role in bringing forth a living Native Art history. It is also the largest exhibition of contemporary Native American art at a museum to date. Comprising over 100 works across a range of media, from beadwork and jewelry to video and painting, Indigenous Identities foregrounds the significance of identity in artmaking through the diverse practices of 97 artists, representing more than 50 distinct Indigenous nations and tribes across the United States, and explores the multiplicities of indigeneity and asserts the inextricability of Native American Art from the contemporary canon.
Celebrating the breadth of groundbreaking contemporary art made by Native artists, the show surfaces a series of guiding concepts—land, social, tribal, and political—that unify the works on view and speak to the permeability of art in Native American life. Featuring jewelry, ceramics, beadwork, and basketry alongside painting, sculpture, and installation, the exhibition confronts the idea that traditional forms of making are artifacts of a past life and acknowledges these practices and their contemporary resonance.
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G. Peter Jemison (Seneca, Heron Clan), Red Power, 1973, acrylic on canvas. Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM; James Hart Photography. Courtesy of Zimmerli Art Museum
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Kay WalkingStick (Member of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and Anglo), Buffalo Country, 2018, oil on panel. Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM. © Kay WalkingStick. Photography courtesy of Frolick Gallery, Portland, OR. Courtesy of Zimmerli Art Museum
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Norman Akers (Citizen of the Osage Nation), Drowning Elk, 2020, oil on canvas. Gochman Family Collection. Photocredit Aaron Paden. Courtesy of Zimmerli Art Museum
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Zoë Urness (Tlingit), Year of the Women, 2019, analog capture-digital chromogenic output on Fuji Crystal Archive paper with UV over laminate mounted to Dibond aluminum substrate. Tia Collection, Santa Fe, NM. Image courtesy of the artist. Courtesy of Zimmerli Art Museum
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Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Never Forget, 2021, C print. Forge Project Collection, traditional lands of the Moh-He-Con-Nuck. Courtesy of the artist and Peter Blum Gallery, New York. Photocredit Jason Wyche. Courtesy of Zimmerli Art Museum
In curating Indigenous Identities, Smith invited artists to help select the work that would represent them in the exhibition, a reciprocal curatorial practice that subverts the more typical institutional processes that are prescriptive and predetermined. The resulting exhibition is expansive in the range of works presented, and in the artists whose voices are included. Furthering a Native Art history that is non-linear and inclusive, Smith situates the work of elders, such as G. Peter Jemison, George Longfish, and Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, alongside works by younger generations including George Alexander and Tyrrell Tapaha; lesser-known artists join celebrated names such as Jeffrey Gibson, Raven Chacon, Wendy Red Star, and Julie Buffalohead.
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