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‘Shapeshifting’ exhibit puts Native American art in a new light

ART PREVIEW

THIS STORY APPEARED IN

January 04, 2012|By Joel Brown

(Page 3 of 3)

Even when cultures meet, they don’t always clash. Consider Tlingit/Aleut artist Nicholas Galanin’s 2006 videos “Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan (We Will Again Open This Container of Wisdom That Has Been Left in Our Care)’’ parts I and II. In the first part, a 10-minute loop, a breakdancer pop-locks to traditional tribal drums and chants. In the second, a 5-minute loop, a Tlingit dancer in traditional garb performs to an electro-bass techno track.

The title comes from a song in the first video, Galanin said by phone from Sitka, Alaska. “To me that philosophy is still running as a vein in my work. The container of wisdom is the culture, and I suppose it’s our duty to open that container to new things, and continue to grow,’’ Galanin said. “What that work really does is, when somebody looks at it, they assume something, and it kind of addresses what they are assuming and then maybe surprises them.’’

The exhibit perhaps works the same way. “There is definitely a slower clock to the general public, I suppose, in how they consume and perceive and accept and deal with contemporary artists in the native art world,’’ Galanin said.

He noted that a newspaper review of a group show he was involved in not long ago stirred controversy by referring to some of the works as “objects,’’ as if they were somehow in a separate category from the rest of the contemporary art world.

“There is definitely a glass ceiling, I suppose in the native art world,’’ Galanin said. “I’m really happy to take part in exhibitions like this.’’