Native America: In Translation, curated by artist Wendy Red Star, assembles the wide-ranging work of nine Indigenous artists who offer contemporary perspectives on memory, identity, and the history of photography. "I was thinking about young Native artists and what would be inspirational and important for them as a road map," said Red Star.
This road map spans intergenerational image makers representing various Native nations and affiliations, and working in photography, installation, multimedia assemblage, and video. Among them, the late Cree artist Kimowan Metchewais investigates landscape and language through his evocative Polaroids. And the stylish self-portraits of Martine Gutierrez pose as fashion ads and question conceptions of ideal beauty.
Together, their work confronts the historic, and often fraught relationship between photography and the representation of Native Americans, while also reimagining what it means to be a citizen in North America today.
Contemporary Indigenous artists featured: Rebecca Belmore, Nalikutaar Jacqueline Cleveland, Martine Gutierrez, Koyoltzintli, Duane Linklater, Guadalupe Maravilla, Kimowan Metchewais, Alan Michelson, Marianne Nicolson
For more information, visit the Blanton Museum of Art.
