Sponge Bob Square Pants dances on a traditional ceramic plate. Tweety and Sylvester stand at attention in a beautifully woven Navajo rug. Po’pay, the historical leader of the bloody 1680 Pueblo Revolt, towers over Spanish soldiers on a comic book cover.
These are three of many startling images in a thought-provoking exhibition that just opened in Santa Fe. “Into the Future: Culture Power in Native American Art” questions how Western pop culture has reinforced stereotypes in both commerce and entertainment. Two hundred works in this smart exhibition co-opt the long-standing manipulation of Native American imagery by reframing. That the artists often use traditional materials drives the satire even deeper.
Turning the tables on stereotypes, it’s reverse colonization and a thrilling jolt to the system.
Curated by Valerie Verzuh, the new show at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture continues a tradition of high quality, high concept exhibitions that make you think about what you see. Culture Power operates from the principle that cultural objects carry baggage and define who we are and who the other is.
Works by more than 50 Native American artists demonstrate different ways of adapting to a dominant Euro-American culture. The artists recalibrate mass-media imagery that triggers startling disconnections. If you’re not taken by surprise when you see Frank Buffalo Hyde’s painting of “Buffalo Fields Forever,” with a space ship in pursuit of animals on the run, you’re not paying attention. Arigon Starr’s send up of the Indiana Jones franchise, “Pueblo Jones Great Paris Auction Rescue,” looks like a real movie poster. But it’s a trickster’s slick attempt at bait-and-switch, and it’s very likely related to a current repatriation case involving an Acoma Shield.
Ricardo Caté’s single-frame cartoon from Without Reservations gently sparks the controversy over Chief Wahoo, the Cleveland Indians logo. “This is my cousin from Cleveland” says an Indian on a mesa introducing the goofy, smiling caricature. If this isn’t timely, what is?
Last week, (Herald, Aug. 10) Herald reporter Shane Benjamin covered a brawl between two Native Americans who happen to be former Fort Lewis College students. The controversy centers on a Washington Redskins T-shirt worn to a powwow last year. The wearer thought the Indian logo was fine; the complainant thought it disrespectful.
The argument over so-called Indian mascots divides Native American communities. Whites also differ on why racist sport mascots haven’t disappeared along with Little Black Sambo. The subject of cartoon stereotyping is ripe for Native American artists.
Of the five exhibit sections, Culture Jamming seems the most provocative. This is a different way of talking about borrowing or appropriating imagery to make new statements.
David Bradley’s large mockup of commercial packaging stands out. A huge box, “Land O Bucks Unsalted Butter,” looks like real product design. Look closely and you’ll see altered wording and a stereotypical Indian maiden reverently holding a pile of money. Bradley’s faux object asks if we even see crass racial profiling in the grocery store.
Dark humor runs through the exhibit. It has served tribal cultures well through the roles of the trickster or the Pueblo clown. Larry McNeil is a visual trickster when he uses comic book aesthetic to deliver an unexpected power punch: “Tonto gives Ed Curtis a lesson in Native Values.”
Tricksters disrupt the social order, the status quo, and conventional ways of thinking about society, As Verzuh says more formally states in one wall text: “In artistic practice, culture jamming is a form of activism that challenges the authority of mass culture by hijacking pop icons and visual imagery.”
Culture Power is an important exhibition and can be seen now through October 2017.
Judith Reynolds is an arts journalist and member of the American Theater Critics Association.
If you go
“Into the Future: Culture Power in Native American Art,” Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, Museum Hill, 710 Camino Lejo, Santa Fe. More than 200 works from MIAC collections. Through Oct. 22, 2017. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. daily through October. Admission: $9, children under 16 free. Info: (505) 476-1250, www.indianartsandculture.org.
