Just Injust 2021
Neal Ambrose-Smith, descendent of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana, is a contemporary Native American painter, sculptor, printmaker, and Professor at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has also developed an app Artist Ideas with 100 ideas for making art, available for Android and Apple. His work is included in the collections of many national and international museums and institutions, including the New York Public Library, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, Galerie municipale d’art contemporain in Chamalières, France, and Hongik University in Seoul, Korea. He received his BA from the University of Northern Colorado and MFA from the University of New Mexico.
Monotype: color Xerox transfer, Akua ink and India ink on dry Arnhem 1618
It would seem like new license has been appropriated by peoples from all over the earth in the last 4 years. A sudden sense of entitlement arose against good judgment and critical thought. Women, marginalized communities and people of color were now to blame for some inequity. The question is, what entitlement for what inequity?
It’s clear that’s there is no clear answer. Newsstand tabloids from years past have always been recognized as entertainment just as Rush Limbaugh is an entertainer, but somehow The National Enquirer became the road map for Fox News and then QAnon. 4 years later a failed dictatorship based upon a Bat Boy Lives, Headless Woman at Topless Bar and Abraham Lincoln was a Woman campaign and now the adults are left to clean up the mess.
Dana Schutz, Sam Durant and Latifa Laâbissi have appropriated sensitive topics outside their own culture. Whether it was in good faith or to dialogue past wrongs, their work is read as sensational. Koon’s Made in Heaven series might rise above, but a tough call. My concession for Sam is to see the beauty and relevance of culture. To honor and respect and marvel. Let’s have that conversation. Let’s talk about how beautiful we are rather than romanticizing pain. On the other hand there is also the opposite effect happening to Jimmie Durham, whom I believe is more Coyote than Iron Eyes Cody :)