EDITOR’ S GREETING
BACK IN MY GRAD SCHOOL DAYS at San Francisco Art Institute, the common refrain during critiques was,“ Push it further.” Secretly I was thinking an all-Indigenous art critique might suggest,“ Be more centered.” Instead of finding the metaphoric edge, why not seek the core?
Based on our viewpoints, cultures, and lived experiences, we come from radically different places. Art, which can be seen as a crystallization of intention, provides a lightning rod for us to simultaneously reflect upon, examine, and question our perspectives and those of the artist. Visual arts can be the catalyst for cross-cultural understanding. But are we willing to meet the art halfway? Are we willing to be open to its possibilities?
All too often, we become entrenched in our preferred corner of the art world— be that Amazonian featherwork, Cochiti pottery, or installation art with the appropriate university pedigrees and Helvetica texts.
In this issue, we invite you to explore diverse artistic media, beginning with performance art, video, and photography that employ the concept of alter egos— stepping outside oneself to create a new identity able to speak and act freely, unencumbered by societal expectations. Northern Plains horse dance staffs from the 19th century to the present speak of respect for nonhumans— horses— and also touch on war against non-Natives and enemy tribes, which can be a taboo subject in today’ s world. This uniquely Indigenous artistic media contrasts with the Neoclassical marble sculpture of Edmonia Lewis( ca. 1844 – 1907), a Mississauga Ojibwe of African-Haitian ancestry. Place is so central to the understanding of Native art, even if that place is in Italy, where Lewis used a quintessentially Western art medium to insert the Native and African diaspora narrative into the mainstream
America Meredith( Cherokee Nation), digitally altered version of Edmonia Lewis: Wildfire, 2007, acrylic on canvas, 40 × 30 in. Original painting is in the collection of the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, Norman, Oklahoma.
art dialogue of her time. Three Lumbee artists challenge the idea of artist as lone individual by making community and collaboration central to their painting and photography.
Outside of this magazine’ s purview of Indigenous art is our discussion of Jimmie Durham. Nancy Mithlo( Chiricahua Apache) and James Luna( Payómkawichum-Ipi-Mexican- American) both wanted to respond to Durham’ s retrospective, which was intended not only to consolidate his place in American art history but also to incorrectly consolidate his identity as a Native American artist. I invited Roy Boney Jr.( Cherokee Nation) to do what mainstream art historians have failed to do and examine Durham’ s use of the Cherokee language.
After that single distraction, we will return to devoting all of our space and energy to what we love the most— art by Indigenous peoples of the Americas, in all of its glorious diversity and complexity!— America Meredith
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