Locating the native artist: memory and transformation in contemporary artworks

Abstract

The reception and understanding of visual arts made by contemporary Native American artists has been shaped by Euro-American modernist conceptions of the Indian which images them as the unstable form for the contestation of, and comparison to, Western man. This historical process defines Native people today by their presumed absence (or invisibility) and, conversely, defines their presence as the “Other.” Therefore, an examination of theories and methods composing Indian identity will be considered, within historical dimensions, to reveal how issues of identity are implicitly linked to a metaphysical “self/other” problem that privileges difference over responsibility. The approach consists of excavating the historical past for the conceiving of alternatives to concomitant issues and postmodern theoretical trends impacting Native American art historical discourse today. As a form of resistance, contemporary Native artists are engaged in reconstructing cultural memory to transgress limits imposed on them by a discourse exclusively tied to the European condition and its historical situations. In particular, the work of Diego Romero and Edgar Heap of Birds will be utilized to show how the politics of difference have been woven into the field of art history and, subsequently, manifested in writings that concern itself with visual art made by contemporary Native American artists. In other words, the various processes Native artists are employing to locate themselves in a contemporary context, as participants in the permanent critique of the present, will correlate with an exploration of mainstream theoretical accounts that have historically dislocated Native artists to the margins of the art world.