Native America: In Translation, curated by artist Wendy Red Star, assembles the wide-ranging work of nine Indigenous artists who offer contemporary perspectives on memory, identity, and the history of photography.
“I was thinking about young Native artists and what would be inspirational and important for them as a road map.”
Wendy Red Star
This road map spans intergenerational image makers representing various Native nations and affiliations, and working in photography, installation, multimedia assemblage, and video. Among them, the late Cree artist Kimowan Metchewais investigates landscape and language through his evocative Polaroids. And the stylish self-portraits of Martine Gutierrez pose as fashion ads and question conceptions of ideal beauty.
Together, their work confronts the historic, and often fraught relationship between photography and the representation of Native Americans, while also reimagining what it means to be a citizen in North America today.
Contemporary Indigenous artists featured:
- Rebecca Belmore
- Nalikutaar Jacqueline Cleveland
- Martine Gutierrez
- Koyoltzintli
- Duane Linklater
- Guadalupe Maravilla
- Kimowan Metchewais
- Alan Michelson
- Marianne Nicolson
About the Curator
Wendy Red Star (born in Billings, Montana, 1981) is a Portland, Oregon-based artist raised on the Apsáalooke (Crow) reservation. Her work is informed both by her cultural heritage and her engagement with many forms of creative expression, including photography, sculpture, video, fiber arts, and performance.
An avid researcher of archives and historical narratives, Red Star seeks to recast her research, offering new and unexpected perspectives in work that is at once inquisitive, witty, and unsettling. Red Star holds a BFA from Montana State University, Bozeman, and an MFA in sculpture from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her monograph, Wendy Red Star: Delegation, was published by Aperture in 2022. Native America: In Translation extends Red Star’s work as guest editor of the Fall 2020 issue of Aperture magazine.
Kimowan Metchewais, “Cold Lake Fishing,” undated, paper, ink, adhesive tape, graphite, acrylic paint, 18 x 29.7 in.
Rebecca Belmore, “matriarch,” 2018, from the series “nindinawemaganidog (all of my relations),” Photograph by Henri Robideau archival pigment print, 56 x 42 in., Courtesy of the artist
Koyoltzintli, “Spider Woman Embrace,” Abiquiu, New Mexico, 2019, from the series MEDA, 2017–19, framed archival pigment print, 24 x 30 in., Courtesy of the artist
Alan Michelson, “Hanödaga:yas (Town Destroyer),” 2018, framed archival pigment print, 30 x 24 in., Courtesy the artist
Upcoming Programs
[Program Listing block]
Press
The Daily Texan
Heritage, history, healing: Blanton’s newest exhibition showcases photography-based works by contemporary Native American artists
Tribeza
‘Native America: In Translation’ Exhibit Opens at the Blanton Museum of Art
Credit
Native America: In Translation is curated by Wendy Red Star. The exhibition is organized by Aperture, New York, and is made possible, in part, with generous support from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Support for this exhibition at the Blanton is provided in part by the Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation.
Additional support for this exhibition at the Blanton is provided by Suzanne Deal Booth.