Writing for KK's Class, What Matter's in Contemporary Art--My Missing chapter!

The most interesting art happening recently reclaims a contemporary, and humanistic portrait of the post-colonial indigenous psyche and people’s. Most importantly these artist’s who bridge together indigenous/tribal paradigms to the multi-cultural present of contemporary society, both psychologically and intellectually through the language of visual art. It is of the utmost importance for the Western or First world, who disseminate rapidly into an expanding global society to look in depth to what happened and what still happens to indigenous cultures during and after historical traumas in the wake of colonialism. In thinking of microcosms reflecting a macrocosm, it is good to learn from the people who are feeling the pain of disconnect from living so close to their ancestral homelands. Understanding the dilemmas of being a modern human are related to the loss of an indigenous paradigm, this intellectual form of art reverberates importance for the sake of preserving the unique remnants of ethnic and cultural identities in a modern context, before the monoculture of corporatism takes over completely, and is forgotten. One of the best ways to begin to look at these complicated cultural genocide’s, is to go to where beauty and creativity emerge, in the artwork created in the wake by post-colonial indigenous artists. I am primarily interested in these contemporary artists who engage a dialogue with the larger audience of contemporary art; either through their medium, or execution of creating dialogue specifically about this exact content. Some of the most vibrant and unique voices are coming from the indigenous descendants of the Pacific Rim, from Australia and New Zealand to the America’s. The majority of these artists are of mixed-blood peoples, coming from multi-cultural and ethnic backgrounds having a superb vernacular in both Western art making as well as their own native art traditions.

Artist Statement~as of 1/18/2013

This work navigates through “split-headedness,” which comes from being raised within an indigenous/tribal paradigm as well as having education in linear, Western concepts and society. This journey continues by sifting indigenous identity through a colonized being searching to decolonize, discovering ways to bridge understanding of what it is to exist in a state of two conflicting paradigms. The aim is for this work to reverberate the current spirit of resilience and healing within my community with expressive mark making and vibrant colors. This exploration allows reclaiming misconceptions about how indigenous identity is depicted. My studio practice of painting and research leads to experimentation with indigenous symbols, depictions, and philosophy, creating an artistic space for these expressions to exist within the art-historically loaded realm of Western (a tradition of European and Modernist American) painting. Creating scarred, layered surfaces with palette knife painting and scraping, bringing forth emerging and disappearing figures with squeegees, I create emotive landscapes that bridge between literal and abstract, searching for where my identity belongs. Following an oil-paint bar line transverse ancestral maps leads one through these plains of generational trauma, nostalgia, histories and stories. By using a Euro-centric historically packed medium, oil painting, the dichotomy of understanding contemporary indigenous people hoods struggle to relate, connect, and live in a society created to destroy them is ambiguously revealed. By excavating complicated and ugly psychological depths, beauty is unveiled through re-creation, using marks that manifest qualities of present and lost ceremonies, bodies, language, song, and homelands.