Myths, Homes and Self Portraiture

   

Wendy Red Star’s A Scratch On the Earth, shows her idea of what home and identity are. The exhibition made me think about history of Native Americans in the United States and their plight to regain ownership of the lands stolen from them and how they are living now. I thought about how they operate space in history, culture and in their daily lives. The two series,The 1880 Crow Delegation, (2014) and Diplomats of the Crow Nation, 1873 Crow Delegation (2017) were my favorites both, formally and conceptually. The large black and white portraits with the pop of red writing which all had  significance. I find that many times in our society, Native Americans and their culture are spoken of in somewhat of a ‘mythical’ sense or in past tense, as if they aren’t around anymore. Seeing Red Star identify the cultural significance of the people in the portrait along with the details of their clothing and positions, provides a reality and understanding of her culture, to an outsider. In regards to ‘myth’ Red Star’s work she brings to life what many of us may not
see daily or could easily identify. It felt like being invited into her home.




Skywriters and Constellations from Kambui Olujimi’s Wayward North Project explores identity and space, literally, set in outer space. The parts of the story was taken out of Olujimi’s Wayward North and strung together  to create the film Skywriters. It was a bit fragmented in  Although, at some points the narration was a bit disjointed from the narrative and it made the storyline difficult to follow, it was still very visually intriguing to me. The ambition of the presentation of his ideas makes me want to learn even more about his work. The images in the Constellations exhibition felt as though they were stills or freeze frames of the Skywriters film. 

I thoroughly enjoyed both Red Star and Olujimi’s installations and was very inspired by their artistic approach with the different mediums used. It makes me want to push my project even further. The connections between artists Wendy Red Star and Kambui Olujimi and how it relates to my self portrait, is the examination of spaces. In many of Wendy Red Star’s collages she combines real life images with computer aided images. The traditional and non traditional mediums Olujimi uses is also something that I have used many times in my work and will be the same for this project. One could say that my self portrait project (formally and conceptually) is similar to a combination of both artists’  artistic approach to their projects. Red Star and Olujimi both use collage and a combination of art and technology in their artwork, which is exactly what I’m doing for my project as well. I will be doing a series of collages that will illustrate a narrative of my examinations of spaces, whether physical environments, space in it’s literal, geographical sense and time, how I fit into the world, the spaces I do or don’t take up, where and what space in time where my identity was formed, will bring forth a variety of  images that track parts of my identity story.