People express themselves in countless ways. Through writing, through music, through painting, through the sports they play, people search for and cultivate their own identities. But do these identities evolve in a vacuum, or are they instead deeply embedded in one's own complex history?
In the Hood Museum of Art's newest exhibition, "Reservation X: The Power of Place," seven contemporary artists necessarily find themselves grappling with these questions, as they try to express themselves through their art. "Reservation X" presents seven installations by native American artists from the United States and Canada. These installations -- though ranging widely in media and individual message -- share a common search for the artists' places in an often-intermediary world between that of "mainstream" culture and that of their native heritage.
Whether still living on a reservation or having moved away and into an urban environment, each artist in the show strives to find his or her place within the native community. For each artist, community means something very different. Though their cultural identities are undoubtedly integral aspects of their lives -- as immediately detected in their artwork -- some artists express this through extremely personal reflection, while others find their personal voices in the form of their aboriginal roots.
The exhibition aims to embody the complex relationship these artists share with the worlds they inhabit. Just as every artist in the exhibition approaches the theme of place within the community in a unique way, each installation occupies its own distinct space in the galleries. Still, as much as the artists are joined in their common devotion to their cultural identities, the installations mimic this inevitable overlapping. The sounds of a buffalo dance built into one mural installation combine with the voices emanating from the walls of a faux classroom in another, making the exhibition as a whole as much an auditory experience as it is visual.
Accordingly, it is immediately obvious that this is not your typical museum exhibition. Indeed, this show involves installations, which, by definition, requires that the works of art not simply be hung or placed in a gallery but rather actively manipulated to suit a given space. "Reservation X" is a traveling exhibition, organized by the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Quebec, and takes on new forms as it is re-installed in each space.
For the artists, too, the nature of a traveling show urges them to revisit their work as it reaches each new venue. In fact, for C. Maxx Stevens, whose installation is entitled "If These Walls Could Talk," the re-installation process gives her the opportunity to make both large and small alterations to her work.
"My work has been set up differently with each installation -- it evolves. I think the way it is set up this time is probably the best so far," Stevens said.
Unlike exhibitions involving works of art whose creators are no longer living, contemporary art has the advantage of retaining the artist's hand in the presentation of the work. This is anything but "dead art," in that it is very much malleable, interactive, and, of course, contemporary.
"This is innovative art. You are stepping into a very distinctive, powerfully charged environment. This a different kind of museum experience, and it may change people's minds about museums," Derrick Cartwright, Director of the Hood Museum, said.
Certainly, visitors to the exhibition are thrown directly into the art, not simply studying paintings on the gallery walls but interacting with the works of art. In one installation, for instance, it is the visitors themselves who manipulate what is projected onto the gallery walls by clicking images on a computer screen. The installations are designed to engage the visitors and allow them to delve into the native experience through very personal portals.
"For me, the most powerful part of the exhibition is this sharing of the personal experiences and the artists' personal voice," Lesley Wellman, Curator of Education, said.
For some artists, finding this personal voice means literally recreating scenes from the past. Stevens' room installation positions the entering visitor at a point immediately between two very distinct worlds. To the right, Stevens has carefully recreated a classroom, with books open on desks, a blackboard, and even a clock frozen in time just before the anticipated 3 o'clock dismissal bell. To the left, the scene is dramatically different. The tiled classroom floor gives way to a soil-like ground, exposed wooden pillars, and a traditional long table, representing the native home.
"You can be part of this [mainstream] world, but you can maintain the essence of the past, so you do not get lost," Stevens said.
In this contrasting juxtaposition of the two worlds, Stevens notes that native people need not be dislocated entirely from one world or the other: you can strike a balance between holding onto traditional values and getting an education.
Similarly recreating scenes from the past, Nora Noranjo-Morse's "Gia's Song" is a sample of art very closely imitating real life. Erecting a reservation home within the museum's galleries, Noranjo-Morse contrasts this government-designed structure with the more traditional dwelling familiar to her community. Whereas the cramped conditions and poor-construction of the reservation home elicit the loss of community, the winding walkway leading to the ancestral clay-built shelter evokes a sense of peace and tranquility, unaffected by the modern world.
The modern world also strikes particularly hard in "Corn Blue Room," an installation by Jolene Rickard. Using photographs and CD-ROM projections, which induce the visitor to participate in the installation, Rickard creates the illusion of her small farming-oriented community, unsettlingly intertwined with images of modern technologies, including dams and generators, which threaten the community's collective cultural identity.
Searching for her cultural identity, Shelley Niro delves into her relationship with the community through film. Featuring clips from her feature-length film, "Honey Moccasin," Niro's installation demonstrates her effort to add a new dimension to the ways native people are depicted in film.
"The basic premise is that someone is stealing powwow outfits, and the community is going through a depressed time. They have no powwow outfits," Niro said.
The solution allows for an impressive -- albeit intentionally amusing -- display of community spirit. At the suggestion of the elders, the townspeople are to "make do with what we have." As a result, the powwow outfits are made anew, using anything from Froot Loops and lollipops to inner tubing and bottle caps. These costumes as well as stills from the film are displayed as part of the theater-like installation.
Native history is of particular importance to an installation by Mateo Romero '89. Entitled "Painted Caves," the curved mural installation is inspired by an Anasazi cave shrine and creates a visual timeline of the artist's family and people. Amidst the sounds of a buffalo dance, the mural shows the intermingling of the personal world with that of cultural heritage, including images of the artist himself, his family, and a historical narrative of his tribe.
Pinpointing the "place" of one's identity is no simple task. Of course, there is no single shared experience among the seven artists. Still, it is this common search for individual voice that joins these artists together, regardless of personal cultural identity. All the artists share a mutual desire to locate their places within their own worlds, and, as a result, all inhabit the broader artistic realm that is "Reservation X."
