CURRENT EVENTS
According to David Garneau (2020), Métis artist, curator, and critic, Indigenous art is an emerging category that extends and adapts First Nations Peoples’ ways of being and knowing to the contemporary moment and well beyond the sites of Indigenous territories of origin. Within this context, Indigenous peoples from around the world are increasingly seeking to establish connections in order to produce international networks and a collective consciousness. If, as jurist and Blackfoot First Nation elder Leroy Little Bear states, in Indigenous culture everything is under flux, then the concept of time is dynamic but without movement. In this regard, Chickasaw academic Chadwick Allen (2013) argues for a “trans-Indigenous” research programme within the field of Indigenous Studies that would allow for a site of enunciation embedded in the specificities of the local Indigenous while simultaneously grappling with the complexities of the global Indigenous.
Andrea Noble (2004) has argued that canonical Visual Culture Studies have tended to present a progressive and innovative discourse in its approach to image and visual analysis. Yet, for her, Visual Studies’ understandings of the visual have found clear limits when it comes to addressing non-Western forms of visuality. Noble maintains that Visual Studies have invisibilized the Western-centredness of their theoretical framework and have erased the theories and practices of coloniality that conceptually anchor their foundational analytical categories. Similarly, Nicholas Mirzoeff (2011) has argued that, historically, Visual Studies emerged as a discourse mostly by the West for the West. In this regard, Noble and Mirzoeff champion a more critical, decolonial approach to Visual Studies that takes into account the orthodoxies on which this interdisciplinary field is based in order to better account for other, non-Western understandings of visuality.
Applicants must fill in the above registration form and provide:
1. A letter of motivation detailing their interest in the course and their links to the Summer Course topic
(600 words in English or Spanish).
2. A brief CV (300 words in English or Spanish).
Deadline for submission of applications: 16 June, 2023.
Accepted applicants will be informed by e-mail on: 23 June, 2023.
Course participants: 10-15. Certificates of attendance will be available upon request.
(The organization may opt to cancel the course if it does not reach a minimum of 10 registered participants.)
RELATED EVENTS
SYMPOSIUM
Sustainability, Pedagogy, and Environmental Justice in the Performing Arts
Co-organised by Prof. Helen Gilbert, Prof. Liz Schafer, and Dr. David Bullen, Department of Drama, Theatre, and Dance, Royal Holloway, University of London
9-10 June 2023
Royal Holloway, University of London
Hybrid event (in-person and online)
Attendance is free with registration via Eventbrite.
The increased visibility of the Indigenous in the framework of global contemporary art is marked by the recent inclusion in the "mega-exhibitions" (peripheral biennials or global salons, Documenta) of an increasingly bulky presence of artists from Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Canada and the Nordic countries in the search for a global discourse of "Indigeneity", a term that comes from the adjective "indigenous" and the abstract suffix "eity", which indicates quality. The emerging discourse of Indigeneity leads us to establish a distinction between the idea of Indigenous as related to identity, and the notion of Indigeneity understood as a discursive formation, as a relationship that not only includes Indigenous peoples but also those who self-identify as non-Indigenous. Within this framework, in this course we will present the works and contexts of a series of Indigenous artists present in four major exhibitions: the 2017 Kassel Documenta, the 2022 Kassel Documenta, the 2022 Venice Biennale, and the 2023 Sharjah Biennale (United Arab Emirates).
EXHIBITIONS
Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969
24 June-26 November 2023
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Erika Verzutti:New Moons
24 June-15 October 2023
Opening reception: 24 June, 2-5 pm
The Hessel Museum of Art
The Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College
The Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College will present two major exhibitions, to open on June 24: Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969 June 24–November 26, 2023 Curated by Candice Hopkins (Carcross/Tagish First Nation), Forge Project’s Executive Director and Fellow in Indigenous Art History and Curatorial Studies, CCS Bard. Indian Theater: Native Performance, Art, and Self-Determination Since 1969 is the first large-scale exhibition of its kind to center performance and theater as an origin point for the development of contemporary art by Native American, First Nations, Inuit, and Alaska Native artists, beginning with the role that Native artists have played in the self-determination era, sparked by the Occupation of Alcatraz by the Indians of All Nations in 1969. Featuring over 100 works by artists representing a range of perspectives and practices, including Rebecca Belmore (Member of the Lac Seul First Nation (Anishinaabe)), Dana Claxton (Lakota), Theo Jean Cuthand (Plains Cree, Scottish, Irish), Jeneen Frei Njootli (Vuntut Gwitchin, Czech and Dutch), Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill (Métis), Cannupa Hanska Luger (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara, Lakota), James Luna (Payómkawichum, Ipai, and Mexican), Lloyd Kiva New (Cherokee), Spiderwoman Theater, Dyani White Hawk (Sicangu Lakota), among many others, as well as performances and activations by Rebecca Belmore, Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Unangax̂), Arielle Twist (two-spirit Nehiyaw (Cree)) with Jeffrey Gibson (The Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians/Cherokee), Maria Hupfield (Anishnaabek, Wasauksing First Nation/Canada), Emily Johnson (Yup’ik)/Catalyst, Kite (Oglala Sioux Tribe), and Eric-Paul Riege (Diné). Indian Theater will be accompanied by a major publication, Native Visual Sovereignty: A Reader on Art and Performance, edited by Candice Hopkins and co-produced with Forge Project and charting the evolution of Indigenous North American performance in contemporary art over the past 60 years. Available fall 2023, Native Visual Sovereignty gathers extensive scholarship on the development Native North American performance, art, and visual sovereignty, including newly commissioned essays, poetry, and oral history interviews, alongside reprints of critical texts by leading Indigenous scholars and artists. A full list of artists is available online. Erika Verzutti: New Moons June 24–October 15, 2023 Curated by Lauren Cornell, Director of the Graduate Program and Chief Curator, CCS Bard. New Moons—the first survey exhibition of Erika Verzutti (b. 1971, São Paulo) in the United States—provides an expansive view of the Brazilian artist’s bold and influential practice, encompassing over 70 wall works and sculptures made over the past fifteen years. The artist integrates a multitude of references from art and architectural history alongside references to plant, human, and animal life as well as everyday and spiritual objects. The result is both singular new forms and chains of associations. Sometimes, her sculptures replicate through multiple versions, or what have been called “families.” Verzutti’s genealogies intersect with motifs such as eggs and orbs, the outlines of body parts, and traces of the work’s making—evidenced in marks from tools and the artist’s own fingerprints. The pervasive presence of Verzutti’s hands and tools reminds viewers that the artist is not just taking—not just absorbing her references into her creations. Rather, she is emphasizing a relation of transference, projection, and personification. Moons recur throughout Verzutti’s work as symbols of renewal and the multiple phases and cycles that one person or entity can take. They also form a frame for the exhibition. For the artist, moons are part of a cosmos, alongside stars and asteroids, that signal a planetary perspective. This pulled-back viewpoint blurs the tensions and divisions on Earth, forming the basis for an artistic practice that seeks—in its strangeness and discontinuity—to break down prevailing orders, hierarchies, and divisions of knowledge classification. Visitor information Exhibition summer hours are Wednesday through Monday, 12–6pm. All CCS Bard exhibitions and programs are free and open to the public - advance reservations are not required but can be made at ccs.bard.edu.