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christenclifford · 8 years ago

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CROSSROADS: NATIVE FEMINISMS: long draft of the piece I published on Hyperallergic today

(Mound: To The Heroes by Charlene Teters)

I published a piece on Hyperallergic today about The Feminist Art Project’s Day of Panels at CAA. The panels took place back in February, and for various reasons this piece slipped through the cracks, and only made it to editing and publishing this week. I love Hyperallergic and I am thankful to publish this work and bring some much needed attention to the work of Native Artists in a contemporary art setting. The Met only recently decided to display some Native art in the American collection. The piece I wrote was almost 3,000 words! Much too long. So I wanted to put the first version here, for anyone who wanted a little more information. It is less elegantly written, but has many more quotes, especially from the elders, whom I want to honor.

Christen Clifford,Thursday April 27, 2017

BREAKING THE BUCKSKIN CEILING:

CROSSROADS

This spring, the Met announced that it would begin including Native American art in the American Art collection. Back in February, for their 10th Anniversary, the Feminist Art Project undertook a reimaging of the art world that included handing over their first official full on the books partnership with the College Art Association to Indigenous contemporary artists and used their Annual Day of Panels to explore CROSSROADS: Art + Native Feminisms, a day of panels, performances, and dialogue. The event took place at the Museum for Arts and Design, a venue that embraces both craft and art — a categorical division that has historically been used to exclude artists of native ancestry from the mainstream art market. It was a day filled with ceremonies, deeply considered conversations, and moving performances, centering female, queer, and Indigenous experiences of the art world. Videos of the event have just been released and can be found here.

What do you think of when you think of Native art? Have you seen any art by Native American Women in a contemporary art gallery? Why are Indigenous communities so rarely represented in the art world?

February 17th, the night before the symposium, there was a maximum capacity crowd at Grace Exhibition Space for From The Belly Of The Beast a “shout out to the performance artist as antihero.” The evening was co-curated by Maria Hupfield and Katya Grokhovsky, and featured work by Charlene Vickers, Damali Abrams, Emilie Monnet and Dayna Danger, Emily Oliverira and Natalie Ball.

Cultural Appropriation is a problem for many Native Artists. Art historian Crystal Migwans writes here in Canadian Art Magazine about the connection between the “theft of ‘symbols’ such as the headdress with theft of land and lives.”

This symposium was an opportunity for New Yorkers to experience Native contemporary artists and elders in a mainstream contemporary art context, and for Indigenous Peoples from across Turtle Island to gather in New York, which is itself unusual.

The TFAP annual day of panels started with onscreen projections by The ReMatriate Project and an electric violin musical performance by Brooklyn based Laura Ortman. There was a blessing of the space and Connie Tell, the director of The Feminist Art Project at Rutgers introduced the three curators of the day of panels: Jaune-Quick-To-See Smith, Maria Hupfield (full disclosure: we are friends and artistic collaborators) and Kat Griefen

Griefen educated the audience on how to support the water protectors at Standing Rock and how to Divest from the Dakota Access Pipeline by passing out information to #defunddapl

Jaune-Quick-To-See Smith started off with a keynote:

“We are a part of everything…our future our past…we are seven generations…Um yeah, we still live under colonialism!....(being in nature) moves my inward parts with joy….the sacred is the land the sky the water…there’s no old man up in the sky….we are all made of the same earth….we are thankful for the ripples on the water….how can EuroAmericans understand? We don’t see China as the Far East. We see Europe as our Far East, China is our West…The great invasion came to our neighborhood…we see no horizon line, no delineation between human and earth…this is not hippy dippy stuff” The packed room erupts in laughter. ““The women support the men and the men support the women….For Native People the Process is meditative and playful and keeps one balanced….When I was born, only 1 in 10 Native babies survived. I consider myself a miracle….Race is only your DNA, culture is socially how you are raised and not the color of your skin.”

She read from Culture Poem, which had lines about birth and babies. “Is it washed in its mother’s urine and dried in the sun or is it slapped upside down? What happens to the umbilical cord? It’s a really important thing that umbilical cord. Some wear it in a pouch their whole lives.”

Tobacco was poured in the 4 corners of the room. Each introduced themselves in their Native language and then in English: their name, where they are from, where their parents are from, and where they were born.

The first panel, The Struggle for Cultural Capital in Contemporary Native American Art, was chaired by Diane Fraher a filmmaker and the Director of Amerinda Inc. and consisted of the elders Gloria Miguel, Muriel Miguel and Jaune-Quick-To-See Smith. They acknowledged that they as Indigenous people fight against forced assimilation. “This is rare occasion where we are in a mainstream venue.”

Gloria and Muriel Miguel are sisters, and part of the Spiderwoman Theatre Company. (full disclosure: I assisted Gloria teaching a theatre class to kids at a community center in Bushwick in the early 90’s, right after I graduated from NYU.)

Muriel talked about being a “city Indian” from Brooklyn. She was a shawl dancer and studied modern dance. She worked with Joe Chaikin and the Open Theatre and the group was interested in “new” storytelling techniques. “They said, wow Muriel, you are such a good storyteller! with such surprise and I said Well, Yeah!”

“But I really wanted to talk about women. Not feminism, but WOMEN.”

Gloria performed an excerpt of a powerful monologue that ended with the repeated, “I’m still here! I’m still here! I’m still here!”

Gloria and Muriel performed with their father in Wild West shows and next to the freaks in Coney Island. “He was a pretty good song and dance man,” said Gloria.

Gloria was living in Westbeth. She said, “I was talking about missing and murdered women 41 years ago. Our first piece for Spiderwoman was about sexual violence. We were, uh, nasty! We collected dirty jokes, racist jokes, we did a piece about men rubbing up against women on the subways! Spiderwoman saved our lives in so many ways.”

When Gloria went to Hollywood, an agent told her he couldn’t find any roles for her. “You look like you would knife someone in a dark alley!”

Jaune-Quick-To-See Smith spoke of making archives and writing. “The writing about Native art began in the 90’s; we are still missing the history of women in the 70’s. Our generation is the first to break the buckskin ceiling. We are pioneers (pioneers before there were pioneers - Indians!). We are renegades.”

One of the struggles for Native artists is to even be seen as contemporary. As Smith said, “They see us as Egyptians and Aztecs!”

At one point Robin Veder, the new editor at American Art Journal, stood and said that she specifically would like to include contemporary native art in it’s pages. The morning panels ended with questions about the future. Muriel Miguel said, “I want two-spirit theatre. I want queer theatre.” Smith Said, “Coyote is in cyberspace now.” Diane Fraher said, “It’s good to be an Indian. We can’t change the past but we can be who we are.”

Maria Hupfield introduced the afternoon with a Territorial Acknowledgement of the historically displaced Lenni Lenape here in New York City, home of the highest urban indigenous population today. In a moment of performed cultural recovery recent Lenape speaker, and decent Vanessa Dion Fletcher was invited to the stage to introduce her self in Lenape teach the audience to say "I am happy to meet you".

The afternoon panels started with The Problematics of Making Art While Native and Female. Chaired by Andrea Carlson, the panel included the next generation of artists Carly Feddersen and Ryan Elizabeth Feddersen, Dr. Julie Nagam from the University of Winnipeg and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Grace Rosario Perkins of the Black Salt Collective and the artist Charlene Teters.

Carly Feddersen showed slides of her jewelry. Brainiac Broaches, 2016. Sterling silver, pink quartz, and white topaz. She defined “Human” as “One who has land and dream together.” She told us that we are “starstuff and earthstuff” and that she uses animals in her work because “before humans were the people animals were the people.” She showed a cameo called “Mother” that was a “fierce cameo” and a tribute to heavy metal band Danzig. She was wearing it, it was sublime.

Her sister, Ryan Elizabeth Feddersen, showed work from a series called Coyote Now! Which consisted of coyote bones cast and molds made which in turn created crayons shaped like coyote bones, which were then used in hands on art activity at The Tacoma Art Museum as a collaborative coloring installation about the trickster who may have had a hand in global warming. Participation, engagement with craft and retaking the DIY space from the masculine flavor of Maker Faire are all aspects of her work.

Dr. Julie Nagam spoke about her cross appointment as Canadian Research Co-Chair in the History of Indigenous Art in North America

in Winnipeg at both the University and the Art Museum. “I am there to indigenize the University and the Gallery.” Her installation “singing our bones home” utilizes video, sculpture and audio inside a wigwam, representing living history and the relocation of Indigenous bodies. When the visitor was inside, “your body triggered sounds.” She is organizing an Indigenous Curators Symposium for fall 2017 and is the lead for the Social Studies and Humanities Research Council project The Transitive Memory Keepers: Indigenous Public Engagement in Digital and New Media Labs and Exhibitions.

Grace Rosario Perkins of the Art Matters 2017 Black Salt Collective was especially interesting to me. Her work explores personal narrative, assimilation, and code switching. She said that her “GED class was right next to a comic book store and I learned to draw from comics.” Black Salt Collective is “all queer women of color… I believe in collaboration…we keep changing it up and creating our own language.” For their show Visions into Infinite Archives, “It was an archive that was defined by us.”

Charlene Teters is an artist and activist best known for her activism against the use of American Indian mascots. She spoke about objectification, “Everything that is ours is turned into an object. It is rare to be seen as a full fledged human being.” Her work about mascots began at the University of Illinois, where she was one of three Native Americans on campus. When one left in the middle of the night, a professor chanted, “One little, two little, three little Indians…” at her and ended with, “two left! Keep your mouths shut.” She described being persona non grata for all of the year except “around Thanksgiving, when I would get invited to 1,000 Thanksgiving dinners, none of which I went to.” Her piece Mound: To The Heroes (ABOVE) is a photo mural of the flag raising at Iwo Jima with only the Pima man, Ira Hayes, left. The juxtaposition of the Native American and the flag just out of his reach is an amazing metaphor for indigenous struggles for basic human rights on their own land.

At the end Carlson shared her experience of being a guest artist, “They think that Pocahontas is going to come and teach us about art.” Ryan said, “There is no word for art in indigenous language. In the Western world art is an object to be exhibited and sold but for us it’s about use, process, continuations of a practice and a dialogue.”

The next panel was called Kinship, Decolonial Love, and Community Art Practice and was chaired by Lindsay Nixon the recently appointed Indigenous Editor at-large for Canadian Art leading the Indigenous art and culture content initiatives, she said the artists come first. Panelists were independent artists Lyncia Begay, Dayna Danger, Marcella Ernest, and Tarah Hogue, of grunt gallery.

Nixon spoke of Decolonizing Love and a project called Decolonize Me, which she described as a critique of commercialization and an action of reconciliation related to the potlatch practice on the West Coast of maintaining social order, where we “give it all away.”

Dayna Danger said she wants to show off her community which includes two spirit, queer and BDSM people. As a “white presenting” artist she wants to make space and give power to those who need it. She was beading a leather mask while she was on the panel. She talked about an amazing project performance with naked people doused in baby oil who wear antlers as strap-ons.

She spoke about who it is that you center in your work. Who is the work really for? "For the people who are in it." And she said, in response to white cis male critic, "I don't care about that critique. You're right, it's NOT for you. If these bodies aren't there for you to consume, then it's garbage." When people ask her how much they can buy her masks for, she just says, "No." She beaded a close friends tattoo on a mask, "It’s part of our healing journey together…I mean a museum can borrow it and show it, but it's home is with her...she is the keeper of the mask." She also spoke about materiality in her life. "It brings people to me, like Where'd you get those wicked earrings?!?" And she spoke about decolonizing orgasm: "We can decolonize the things that we make, we have power and agency."

Marcella Ernest , whose work has shown twice as an off-site project during the Venice Biannale, is a filmmaker and artist whose interests lie in pop culture, building community support and visibility for indigenous women in same sex relationships and cultural preservation. Her film Odayin was a mirage of images and ambient sounds, layered and dreamlike.

Lycia spoke about cultural appropriation, land, gender and heteronormativitry. “I don’t want to be viewed as an exhibit. I share my work with community because we have the ability to change paradigms. I want to bring awareness to resource extraction, but I am very protective of my work. I create art for my sake, to show that its okay to love yourself.”

Tarah Hogue’s grunt gallery in Vancouver has been showing work since 1984. The #callresponse project supports the work of Indigenous North American women artists working locally across the continent, based in performance art it values lived experience and grounds art in responsible action.

The panelists were asked what they wanted and Lycia said, “I want our land back. I want education to be really for our kids, I feel like there’s always a gatekeeper, it feels one-centric.”

Marcella said, “I want to do the work that I do and feel safe.”

The last hour of the day was a presentation called The Teaching Is In The Making: Locating Anishaabe Feminism as Art Praxis and featured the work of independent artist Leanna Marshall and Celeste Pedri-Smith from Laurentian University, Nadia Kurd the curator of the Thunder Bay Art gallery and a response from Crystal Migwans from Columbia University, who introduced the work as a “transmission of knowledge.” In 1976, The Thunder Bay Art Gallery began collecting contemporary indigenous art. Thunder Bay, on Lake Superior, is a hub for 42 communities.

Marshall and Pedri-Smith’s collaboration reflects and multiplicity of perspectives informed by heritage that range for contemporary jingle dresses, archival photography, contemporary photographs and other bead and textile items.

Pedri-Smith sent a video as she could not attend: “I speak from heart as daughter, as a granddaughter, as a great granddaughter, as a great great granddaughter….I speak from decades and decades of colonial violence and successful resistance…making the dress brings you healing, your thoughts and feelings go into the dress…decolonization is about transformation…the artistic practice of resistance is simultaneously outward and inward…”

Leanna Marshall ended the day with a performance of NIMAMAATA MIYAW, about creating 8 story dresses from love for her family. Marshall sang/spoke and I took these notes from her voice.

“Even now when I talk I can feel her heart break…your kindness so deep I don’t possess this kindness….spiritual perfection your gift was love and it penetrates the most broken of hearts.”

I hope my notes encourage others to investigate and interact with these artists and their work. I hope this summary can somehow be a part of art reconciliation. I hope we all have more dialogue and action together.

Crossroads allowed attendees to share in a sacred space, one where process and materials are about a struggle to exist. The room was filled with elders and academics, knowledge carriers and artists. The ideas that were shared and discussed — dignity for humans and non-humans, land recovery, self-determination, and social relations — demonstrated solidarity and encouraged me to honor and question my ancestors. It was an important day of power and community-building, articulating connections between violence against women and violence against the land. The event was an ambitious, disturbing, and brilliant contribution to North American art and art history.

#thefeministartproject crossroads charleneteters gloriamiguel murielmiguel juanequicktoseesmith nativefeminisms tfap@caa CAA2017

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