Dana Claxton, Headdress
Native Voices, 1950s to Now: Art for a New Understanding opened this weekend at the Brooks Museum. We spoke with museum director Dr. Emily Ballew Neff about the exhibit's curation, themes, and purposes. The exhibit will be on view through May 17, 2020.
Memphis: What was the genesis of this show originally, and why did the Brooks decide to host it?
The exhibition was organized by Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR. The Brooks knew it would be a groundbreaking exhibition and we wanted to make sure Memphians and visitors to our region had access to the most important developments in Native American art from what is now the USA and Canada over the past half century.
The Brooks was looking for an exhibition that would help commemorate the bicentennial of the founding of Memphis, and believed that one way we could enrich and lift our community would be by focusing on the Indigenous heritage, history and culture of our region. We have neighborhoods and street names with Indigenous names but do we really understand what that means? Memphis was also on the Trail of Tears, when the Indian Removal policies of President Andrew Jackson led to the removal of Native Americans across the Mississippi River to Oklahoma.
As a means of reckoning with that painful past, we wanted to celebrate the richness, profundity, humor, and complexity of Native American art through artworks by the most important Indigenous artists from the 1950s to now. This show does that and more. And finally, we used this opportunity to work with the Chickasaw Nation, on whose historic Homelands we all live, to craft what is called a “land acknowledgement.” After about nine months, we were able to do so, and the acknowledgement is featured in the exhibition but will also appear permanently in the museum’s rotunda. It reads, “The Memphis Brooks Museum of Art acknowledges we are located within the historic Chickasaw Homeland. We invite you to join us in paying respect and enjoying the art of all Indigenous peoples both past and present.”
We hope to strengthen our relationship with the Chickasaw Nation through these efforts. Indeed, we received a National Endowment of the Arts grant to cross-promote the work of our partners: the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa, the Chickasaw Inkana Foundation in Tupelo, MS, and Memphis Fashion Week, which will co-sponsor a spectacular Indigenous team of couturiers, ACONAV.
Cannupa Hanska Luger, Mirror Shields
Speak about the range of work included in the exhibit.
This exhibition truly has it all. Painting, sculpture, photography, drawing, textile design, video art, performance art, comics, and, innovative interpretations of traditional arts associated with Native American culture, such as ceramics, basket-weaving, bead working, and weaving in wool using aniline dyes, quilt making created by community sewing circles, among other kinds of artworks.
Just to give you a few examples of the specific range of artworks: A video from an aerial drone filming protesters of the Dakota Access Pipeline (#NoDAPL) holding their mirror shields over their heads—pointing to the sky—moving in a spiral to mimic a water serpent, a creature who appears in many Indigenous cultures and symbolizes water as a source of life. This is extraordinary protest art by Cannupa Hanska Luger and Rory Wakemup.
Another: 60 porcelain hatchets (tomahawks) suspended in the air by monofilament, appearing dramatically as if just thrown. Made of porcelain and decorated with the floral patterns of delftware, these tomahawks—a ubiquitous symbol of “the Indian”—are not made to be weapons or to be used for daily activities of making and subsistence. Their clay bodies, it is implied, will undoubtedly break on impact, shattering into tiny fragments. As artist Nicholas Galanin notes: “The capability of the hatchets is not in their ability to split wood or bone, but in their ability to shatter, creating small sharp projectiles and edges from decorative representations.” Rendered as fragile and decorative, these hatchets are emblematic of Indigenous cultures, in which the shattered remains change into something else, a metaphor for the survival and resilience of Indigenous communities.
Inuit filmmakers Isuma and Zacharias Kunuk create internationally renowned films in the Canadian Arctic and have been recognized and celebrated by the Cannes Film Festival (the Brooks will hold two screenings in April 2020). Jeffrey Gibson, who recently received a MacArthur “genius” grant, lives and works in New York City, but his homeland is the closest to Memphis: he is from the Mississippi Band of Choctaw and Cherokee, and his mashup of interests: raves, powwows, couture, Asian art, and popular culture result in brilliantly crafted “war shirts” or dresses suspended by 10-foot tipi poles.
Fritz Scholder, Indian Land
What will visitors find most surprising about this show?
This exhibition may be challenging to visitors who expect to see “traditional” Native American arts, such as Navajo jewelry, black-on-black earthenwares, and weavings, all of which would be entirely worthy to see. One of the goals of the show is to examine contemporary Native American art, and how, since the 1950s, Indigenous artists—like most great artists—were aware of and interested in contemporary trends in art, yet informed by their own cultural traditions.
One of my favorite textiles in the show is by Harrison Burnside; it shows a gorgeous fabric with entwined horses heads that look like a yin-yang symbol and the overall pattern is inspired by Japanese wood block prints of ocean waves (Katsushika Hokusai’s Great Wave). It isn’t exactly what you expect when you think of Native American art, which is, of course the point. Native American art is not frozen in the past, but vibrant, alive, curious, innovative, and certainly never monolithic.
The extraordinary range of artworks will be a surprise, to be sure. I also think that the exhibition questions so many of our assumptions and invites us to consider a variety of different perspectives. For example, the canonical artist Fritz Scholder, in the 1980s, began a series called Indian Land, mysterious paintings in a dark, somber palette. As Scholder once noted: “Most minorities have a homeland somewhere, a place that’s theirs. The Indian has a homeland that is possessed by another, dominant culture. This has, psychologically, very strange ramifications.”
Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun, Scorched Earth
Is there a story behind an individual piece in the show that you find particularly compelling?
I have two stories from two amazing artists who happen to be women. Jaune Quick-To-See Smith and her painting Fifty Shades of White is one. She is funny, riffing off the popular erotic novel, Fifty Shades of Gray, but also throwing shade on the “whiteness” of the USA, which is represented in a stunning painting that looks like a school kid’s map of the United States. She uses names drawn from hardware store brands of paint in shades of white, and subs them in for state names. For example, Georgia is “White Peach,” and North Dakota is “Blizzard White.” Her work generally always looks at land and the environment, and how landscapes are alive and contain so many layers of history and civilizations, and she does this in such a witty, powerful way.
Another artist is Vancouver-based Dana Claxton, who borrows the glossy finish and drama of fashion photography in her art to draw attention to how Indigenous peoples and their cultural belongings—such as rawhide containers, buckskin robes, beaded headdresses, drums, shields—are profoundly misunderstood by faux hippies and sports fans, for example. Her work could not be more spectacularly beautiful and yet it also comes with a sharp edge.
What is the "new understanding" referenced in the title?
The title comes from a series of works by contemporary artist Brian Jungen titled Prototypes for New Understanding that the artist made between 1998-2003. The title Prototypes for New Understanding comes from the language of a treaty document, and in this series, the artist took a highly valued commercial object—Nike Air Jordans—and cut them up and changed them into objects that look like masks derived from Northwest Pacific cultures. This series touches on so many relevant issues today: cultural appropriation, how Indigenous culture has been commodified, and the danger of stereotypes. “Art for a New Understanding” asks us to look anew and afresh at what we think Native American art actually is.
What engagement events and activities will be available around this show?
We have so many great ways for visitors to engage with the exhibition. Here is a list of programs. For more information on any of these, please visit brooksmuseum.org.
Saturday, February 29 | 12 – 2 p.m. - Teen Takeover (free admission)
Thursday, March 5 | 2 p.m. - Tea and Tour for Seniors ($3)
Wednesday, March 18 | 6 p.m.- Café Conversations: Amanda Lee Savage (free admission)
Wednesday, April 1 | 6:30 p.m. - Artist Talk: ACONAV Designer and Artist Loren Aragon - Presented in partnership with Memphis Fashion Week (free admission)
Saturday, April 4 (Smithsonian Magazine Museum Day) | 2 p.m. - Guided Tour with Dr. David Dye, University of Memphis (free admission)
Wednesday, April 8 | 7 p.m. - Film: Maliglutit (Searchers) (free admission)
Wednesday, April 29 | 7 p.m. - Film: Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner (free admission)
Friday, May 8 | 5 – 8 p.m. - Community Day (free admission)
Sunday, May 17 | 2 p.m. - Guided Tour with Amanda Lee Savage (included in museum admission)
You can also view the exhibition for free at Orion Free Wednesdays at the Brooks, from 10 a.m. until 8 p.m. weekly.
And during the run of Native Voices, which closes on Sunday, May 17, visitors will receive a ticket for admission to the C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa with paid Brooks admission. Chucalissa visitors will also receive reciprocal admission to the Brooks, thanks to support from the National Endowment for the Arts which is helping us promote past and present Native American cultures via partnerships with the Chickasaw Inkana Foundation, C.H. Nash Museum at Chucalissa, and Memphis Fashion Week.
Anything our readers should know that we haven't asked about?
You can walk through this exhibition and simply marvel at the color, exuberance, technical skill, and vivid imagination of these artists. The exhibition really takes you on a journey. But you can also linger in it and think about so many questions it raises. If you do, one of its many messages is that Native American art in all of its complexity is to be cherished and celebrated as part of the rich tapestry that makes up American and Canadian art, and that great art persists and flourishes despite the legacy of colonialism in our two countries that we still reckon with. Resilience is a powerful thing.
