Review | Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism, Part 1

Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism, the culmination of three years’ work, is finally available. This book is part of the Institute of American Indian Arts’ “Vision Project,” an effort to showcase Native American art writers and new artists, through discussions, writing, and a series of solo exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Arts (former IAIA Museum). The project involved 21 Native art writers and 60 artists.

What I witnessed of the process of the Vision Project was painful to watch, but, nonetheless, the results are inspiring. A committee chose the artists, selecting living artists, established, mid-career, and some emerging artists, who were active last three decades.

Only artists from Canada and United States, including Hawaii, were chosen. Why? Perhaps it’s an Anglophone bias, one certainly found in Canadian and United States academia but one that doesn’t conceptually hold any water. James Luna (Luiseño/Mexican), Mario Martinez (Yaqui), and Jennifer Vigil (Diné/Latina) represent the Americas south of the Rio Grande, and hopefully future projects of this nature will be hemispheric in scope, since innumerable cultural exchanges have taken place from South to North.

The writers were limited to only 500–word essays on each artist; somewhat hamstringing any attempt at in-depth analysis. On the plus side, given such a limited space, the writers chose their words carefully, resulting in beautifully written biographies of contemporary artists. Many of the artists are also writers and vice versa, so meeting and collaborating on this project will no doubt spark future collaborations. Magazine and book editors now have a showcase of talented Native art writers—with many more accomplished Native writers who were not part of this project. The Vision Project shows the world that Native art writers more than up to the task to write about Native art.

How does this differ from projects such as American Indian Art Magazine’s selection of 35 Native artists’ profiles for their 35th anniversary issue? In fact eight artists (Marcus Amerman, Arthur Ammiotte, David Bradley, Bob Haozous, Shelley Niro, Preston Singletary, Roxanne Swentzell, and Denise Wallace) were included in both projects. The immediately difference is that the magazine primarily chose non-Native authors.

Diane Pardue’s profile of Denise Wallace uses more marketing-inspired adjectives, “graceful,” “enchanting and engaging,” (AIA 73) and discusses technique in great detail, while Barry Ace goes more into the context of art in tribal society (Mithlo 186), but the profiles are astonishingly similar. Jennifer Vigil discusses Roxanne Swentzell’s art about women’s body issues (Mithlo 174-5) while Zena Pearlstone doesn’t even touch on the subject but does mention Swentzell’s work in permaculture (AIA 70). Both Mary Jan Lenz and Mique’l Icesis Askren describe Preston Singletary’s being raised away from his culture and his initial pursuit of music; however, Askren, the Manifestations author, looks at the irony of European techniques reconnecting Singletary with his people and that his glass sculptures take become kinetic, when illuminated by light. Ryan Rice touches on Shelley Niro’s “multi-nationality” but gives more straightforward resume information (awards, collections, degrees) than Zena Pearlstone does in her essay, which describes a range of Niro’s works (Mithlo 148-9, AIA 61). And so on it goes.

Trust me, I desperately want to see wide disparities between the two publications approached to art writing; however, the differences are subtle. Over time, the subtleties add up—aesthetics and techniques or content? Tribal ethnologies or contemporary tribal political realities? Some Manifestations art writers make a more dramatic departure. Overall the Vision Project's selection of artists lean towards the more conceptual, more difficult, and not always aesthetically pleasing artwork and there’s more space to discuss harsh realities. But as Nancy Mithlo points out, "the presence of contemporary Native art made from the broken legacy of America's attempt to destroy our communities is powerfully compelling, stark and well, I'll just say it, beautiful" (Mithlo 19).

In this project, women writers were able to analyze women artists and discuss women’s issues, which upon reflection, is not all that common. My personal observation has been that women artists are much better represented in the Native art world than in the mainstream art world; however, gender inequalities do exist. Of the 60 artists, 24 are women. 40% is a positive sign.

It so good to see the focus of Native art writing on content for a change. Thanks to Nancy Mithlo, Manifestations editor; Stephen Wall; Will Wilson, Vision Project manager; Sarah Sense, former Vision Project Director; and everyone else who made this project and publication possible. So far the book is only available through the MOCNA gift shop. Their website is "under construction," but their phone number is 1-888-922-4242.

• Mithlo, Nancy Marie, senior editor. Manifestations: New Native Art Criticism. Santa Fe: Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 2011. ISBN 978-0-615-48904-9.
• Taylor, Tobi, ed. American Indian Art Magazine. Volume 36, Number 1. Winter 2010: 36–74.
• Video interview with Will Wilson about the Vision Project, by DeCoy Gallerina (Chiricahua Apache). Indian Country Today.
• The Vision Project website

Upcoming symposium: Essentially Indigenous

Essentially Indigenous?: Contemporary Native Arts Symposium
Thursday, May 5, and Friday, May 6, 2011
National Museum of the American Indian in New York
George Gustav Heye Center; Diker Pavilion
One Bowling Green, New York, NY

This is a free event. I can't go (someone has to create the art and curate the shows, right?), but if you're in the New York area - check out it. If anyone wants to share feedback about the symposium, I would be very grateful! Session topics include:

• Essential Images: On the Critical Production and Reception of Contemporary Native Art
• Essential Place: The Relationship between Native Art and Place
• Blood Memory: Indigenous Genealogies and Imagined Truths
• Indigenous Aesthetic Paradigms: Community and the Artist.

Registration info.
Schedule online.

In Session: Jolene Rickard and Lucy Lippard In Conversation

“In Session: Conversations with Contemporary Native Artists and Scholars” is a lecture series organized by the Museum of Contemporary Arts. Jolene Rickard (Tuscarora) is an Associate Professor at Cornell University, a visual historian, artist, curator, and scholar of Indigeneity on a global scale. Lucy Lippard, art critic and curator, has written 21 books, is a Guggenheim fellow, and lives in Galisteo, New Mexico

Lippard met Rickard three decades ago at the American Indian Community House (AICH), when it was on Broadway in the SOHO strip of New York City. Rickard and Peter Jemison (Seneca) then introduced Lucy to the Native American art world. Native art history books don’t place time period in context, but Rickard observed a disempowerment of Native artists then, especially in comparison to African-American artists. She cites the lack of theoretical tools and a “lack of recognition of a discrete indigenous political space” as contributing factors to this disempowerment. Now, the art world’s strategy to deal with Native art is for “artists to be seamlessly integrated into the international art scene” without cultural context, which results in “erasure,” Rickard observes. However, Lippard frequently encounters Native artists who actively want to be part of the mainstream.

Rickard is currently at Cornell and focused on intercultural analysis — a center-fringe analysis. She has traveled to indigenous communities beyond those in Canada and United States, as well as exploring the biennial art circuit. She says the situations in Central and South America is dramatically different from the situation north of the Rio Grande. Indigeneity in Australia, Africa, and Indian are highly complex, especially in countries where ostensibly the indigenous population is the majority. Despite the challenges, “if we don’t mark spaces,” Rickard says, “the other side of it is erasure.” Land is the defining concept for indigenous peoples, and she says, “We need to maintain these land bases.” The Maori are ahead of theorizing their own work.

“There will always be artists directed towards satisfying collectors in a particular way,” but Rickard does not write about those artists. “Our work articulates our philosophy. If an artist has a thin knowledge of this philosophy, they aren’t serving their community.” Rickard says, “Inserting yourself back into your community and maintaining a dialogue, you effect the people around you.” She says her tribe is “always willing to take people back in,” but when one returns to their tribal community, they do not return as an expert.

No artists are unanimously accepted by their home communities, so Rickard points out that it’s wrong to expect that of Native artists. “Our communities aren’t perfect,” she says and wants the next generation of artists and writers to critique the problems and challenges the stereotypes. “That has to be an indigenous writer,” says Lippard. Rickard disagrees, but that would have to be an incredibly thick-skinned non-Native writer to try to write about what’s wrong with a Native community

Native Americans are a comparatively small percentage of the United States’ population, globally indigenous people are a huge population and merit serious scholarship. The primary texts are still lacking in the indigenous art world. Lippard points out that the scholarship is happening in other fields, but points out, “Art is decontextualized when it enters the art world.” Once the underlying information is broached, people complain because, “they aren’t talking art.” A challenge of discussing indigenous art in the Americas, Rickard observes, one has to talk about colonialism—which the art world is reluctant to do.

"To be a post-colonial scholar is dubious,” Rickard says. “To the powers that be,” Lippard concludes. The public is happy enough to look at contemporary indigenous art but is not always prepared or willing to deconstruct colonialism, as it is seen as being too divisive. Lippard wonders if artists have more “wiggle room” on the subject than writers, and notices that post-colonial writers are going into teaching or art making.

Native artists in the United States maintain an adversarial relationship with the government. Rickard feels that First Nations artists in Canada, with the exception of the Haudenosaunee, appear to be more integrated with their government and part of the Crown. Continuing with the idea of sovereignty, Rickard points out that the Czech Republic has allowed a Six Nations girl’s team enter the country with their Six Nations passports. Hillary Clinton was supportive of other countries honoring Six Nations passports, but the United Kingdom refused — possibly due to an Anglo-Canadian agreement. “Canadian indigenous peoples have less rights than indigenous peoples in the United States,” she says.

Some indigenous groups that Rickard has observed, such as the Brazilian Yanonamo “don’t care what the rest of the world is doing. They move ahead with their own cultural projects.” The indigenous people of Taiwan have their own television station and are better versed about current issues of indigenous peoples across the globe than anyone else.

Rickard was asked about her plans for an upcoming scholarly journal of indigenous arts, and she says she is working on a website and wants to write about artists that don’t already have a monograph book about them. Certainly something to look forward to in the future!