Then I immediately recognized what each was trying to
accomplish. Tsinhnahjinnie’s artwork struck me as an act
of decolonization, where Curtis’s artwork struck me more as a way to preserve a
certain image—the image of the Romantic Indian (If I am correct, I think King
spoke at great length about what Curtis was up to when Photographing Native
Americans).
Curtis’s artwork reminds me of the traditional story of
colonization, and the black and white images of Native people makes me think of
the unheard that Vizneor talks about in “Shadow Survivance.” All his pictures show
Natives as unmoving, cold, and somewhat stoic in there bearing—I kept thinking
of the way that these “pictures” served as a voiceless narrative, inauthentic
and artificial. They were fictitious
pictures that showed a fake history. *Sorry
I didn’t include pictures, but I am really uninterested in pictures that do
nothing for the people they are supposed to represent.
Thus it comes as no surprise that I was in heaven as soon as
I clicked on the link to Tsinhnahjinnie’s page.
Out of all Tsinhnahjinnie’s these two pictures stood out the
most, and convey a certain rhetoric of survivance. The message is clear, and the audience that
the pictures are made for is clear as well.
The first picture says “They will take everyone’s tongue and replace it with
a consumer lang” and below it says “the idea that history is about us.” The second picture says “The idea that the
story of history can be told in one coherent narrative.” AHHH! Am I wrong in assuming that these are
totally anti-Capitalist in their nature?
If it’s one thing I know about Capitalism it strips people of their
individuality—colonization WAS definitely a product of a desire for Global Capitalism. There is something else these images speak of—the
danger of a Single story. If I am
correct, then this would be why these pictures are from the group called “Double
Vision.”
I was so interested in this concept of Decolonization in
Artwork. That I found another artwork
whose is FANTASTIC and beyond anything I have ever seen.
The artist that I found is called Bunky Echo-Hawk. First off, I find him SO brilliantly kick
ass. His artwork demonstrates his sense
of individuality by deconstructing everything image particular to American
Culture. What better way to decolonize,
than to appropriate and distort the images that have taken one’s own culture in
the first place?
His work is worth the look because he uses the rhetoric and
voice of the colonizer to flip the process of colonization on its head.
Here’s a link to his current works on his Facebook page:
Here’s a link to his website:
A picture of decolonization is worth a million Native thoughts.
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