Myths, Home and Self-portraiture

During the trip to the Newark museum we visited the works of Wendy Red Star and Kambui Olujimi. Red Star’s exhibit mostly focuses on her home identity through her native American culture. Olujimi uses multimedia such as his short film “Skywriters” and various different prints to tell the mythic narrative in his “Wayward North” project

In one of Red Star’s installations she uses a 1907 map of the Crow reservation with images of present day Crow women placed over their ancestral plots of land. Traditionally the Crow society was matrilineal until the General Allotment Act of 1887. The U.S government divided the land of the Indians and this resulted in the matriarchal society to be replaced with a patriarchal one. Wendy uses this part of her culture to show off and empower a different part of her identity, her gender identity. The whole piece as a whole honors the matrilineal history of the Crow tribe.

In another piece of hers, Four Seasons, Wendy uses herself as the main subject in the piece. There are four individual photos with her in the frame and the four seasons are used as the background. This piece focuses on her identity and culture. Red Star uses the photos to portray herself and her culture the way she wants to be seen and heard and clear up the misrepresentations of not just her tribe but natives altogether.

Olujimi’s short film was interesting, but hard to follow and a little confusing at the same time. The film didn’t seem to have any conclusion and jumped around a lot, but was still interesting. The series of constellations are based on characters and mythic narrative that are in his novel “Wayward North”.