In 2015, the art collective Postcommodity installed 26 ten-foot balloons—giant replicas of the commercial “scare-eye” bird deterrents used by farmers and gardeners—at the US/Mexico border. Extending away from the border fence for a mile in each direction, the project both reclaimed the open-eye symbol’s native roots and aimed to serve as a “suture,” ceremonially knitting together the communities of Douglas, Arizona and Agua Prieta, Sonora. During this artist talk, Postcommodity members Raven Chacon, Cristóbal Martínez, and Kade L. Twist discuss Repellent Fence, their practice of community-engaged land art, and themes in “2043: No Es Un Sueño,” the newest contribution to the Walker’s ongoing Artist Op-Ed series. Melding prose and poetry, the trio’s essay offers a powerful reflection on native self-determination, ethnic and national identity, and the year when whites become a minority in the Americas.
This artist talk, moderated by Walker managing editor Paul Schmelzer, was presented in connection with the opening of Postcommodity at Bockley Gallery on Friday, March 10, 6 pm.
New Postcommodity Codex Investigates Land, Systemic Violence, and Minnesota History
Taking its title from the GPS coordinates for Bdote, the birthplace of the Dakota people, Postcommodity's newest artwork is a codex, a pictographic story, examining the Twin Cities's past and present in terms of its relationship to migration, violence to the land, and Indigenous sovereignty. A Walker Reader exclusive, 44.8968° N, 93.1501° W continues thinking by the Indigenous collective from its 2017 Artist Op-Ed, a poetic examination of migration, "nativism," and the year 2043, when whites in the United States are projected to become a statistical minority.
"I believe that fashion makes people happy; it allows people to let others know about themselves by the way they look and dress. Hairstyles, makeup, fragrance, tattoos: it’s more than just clothing," says designer Delina White of IAmAnishinaabe. This lookbook—showcasing fashions and models featured in our June Indigenous Spirit: Gender Fluid Fashion show—celebrates designs that honor Native tradition, diversity, and nonconformity as imagined through the Anishinaabe term Niizho-Manidoog: the sacred embodiment of two genders.
Delina White: Celebrating Gender Nonconformity in Indigenous Fashion
"As Natives, we are underrepresented. It’s my philosophy to represent all people in our community." In advance of Indigenous Spirit: Gender Fluid Fashion, a June 13 showcase of designs by Delina White of IAmAnishinaabe, Minneapolis-based, Lakota-born non-binary artist Juleana Enright caught up with the White to chat about the future of Indigenous fashion and the inspiration behind this gender-fluid collection.
Indigenous fashion has seen a surge in public interest of late, with high-profile runway shows and exhibitions popping up across North America. But with this spike in attention, inevitably, comes controversy, as Native fashion continues to be appropriated by major houses and designers, from Victoria's Secret to Jean Paul Gaultier. Can efforts to counter these trends be described as decolonization? Or should we sidestep that trending term altogether and focus on Indigenizing the industry instead? In a Soundboard edition inspired by the Walker's June 13 Indigenous Spirit: Gender Fluid Fashion show, we asked four voices in Native fashion to tackle these questions.
“Please, Don’t Discover Me!” On The Year of the White Bear
In the early 1990s, Cuban-American artist/writer Coco Fusco and Chicano performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña joined forces to examine the unbalanced relations between the regions that make up the Americas and the complexities of what it means for those individuals who reside between cultures and languages. Their collaboration resulted in the exhibition The Year of the White Bear and performance Two Undiscovered Amerindians Visit the West, both of which were presented at the Walker in 1992. Performance studies scholar Leticia Robles-Moreno offers a reading of how their project asks us to re-evaluate questions of colonialism—past and present—and the potency of containment.
Giving Voice: Tanya Tagaq and the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Children Movement
The music of Inuk throat singer Tanya Tagaq is timeless, writes filmmaker Missy Whiteman, connecting centuries of Indigenous living and thought to this current moment. And with Tagaq returning to the Twin Cities for the second time, this moment couldn't be more opportune, as activism around a cause close to Tagaq's heart—the plight of murdered and missing indigenous women and children—ramps up across the region.
“A difference between learning and knowing is little more than asking questions without the entitlement of an answer, and honoring the vulnerability in saying and hearing, ‘I don’t know.’” In his Artist Op-Ed, experimental filmmaker Sky Hopinka ruminates on power, privilege, and identity—including his own—as he responds to the burden of representation and authority placed on groups of traditionally oppressed people.
Beyond the Guest Appearance: Continuity, Self-Determination, and Commitment to Contemporary Native Arts
Recent political and cultural events (such as the Walker’s own installation and subsequent dismantling of Sam Durant’s Scaffold and the Dakota Access Pipeline protests) have elicited a new wave of critical conversation about the state and future of contemporary Native arts practice. The Walker's recent panel discussion—featuring artists Nicholas Galanin, Ashley Holland, Candice Hopkins, and Steven Loft, and moderated by Dyani White Hawk—was intended to add to and extend conversations that have been happening online, among peers, and in live panels across the country.
Out of Line: Nicholas Galanin Rejects the Traditional/Contemporary Binary
While Nicholas Galanin's art often melds seemingly disparate elements—an AR-15 modified with Tlingit engraving, a mashup of Princess Leia and a 1906 photo of a Hopi-Tew woman, a bear skin rug clad in a US flag—he rejects a binary often applied to his work: the one that divides it into contemporary and traditional elements. "Like colonial national borders cutting through land and people who have lived here longer than those invented lines, these lines drawn through creative production are also an attempt to control."
Art in Times of Uncertainty: I am you, you are too
For an artwork to bear witness to turbulent times and uneasy politics, does it need to be overtly explicit? Can questions of identity be engaged through abstraction, minimalism, and conceptualism? How can art of the past help us come to terms with an uncertain present? In a virtual tour, the curators of I am you, you are too address these questions through works by Yto Barrada, Alfredo Jaar, Yoko Ono, Postcommodity, Danh Vo, and others.
How Can Contemporary Art Be More Inclusive of Native Voices?
Why is Jimmie Durham the artist—or, at least, one of very few artists—selected for a major touring retrospective? Why isn’t more art by Native Americans collected, contextualized, and presented by major institutions? And why is there so little representation—both within museum staffs and in the critical art press that covers them—of Native American, First Nations, and indigenous peoples? In a recent Skype conversation, a panel of Native artists and thinkers—Kathleen Ash-Milby, Jeffrey Gibson, Luzene Hill, Dyani White Hawk, and Candessa Tehee—address these questions.
Why does the term “native” lose meaning south of the border? And why are some white people calling themselves “nativists”? In this Artist Op-Ed, the indigenous collective Postcommodity melds poetry and prose in a powerful reflection on native self-determination, identity, and the year 2043—when whites are expected to become a minority in the US.
