The Newark Museum exposed us to the work of Wendy Red Star and Kambui Olujimi. These works consisted of their own personal narratives, identity, home, and mythology. In the first exhibition “Wendy Red Star” we are instantly intrigued by her works because of the uniqueness and bright colors she uses to demonstrate her identity and cultural pride.
One of her interesting pieces was “Map of the Allotted Lands of the Crow Reservation, Montana-A Tribute to Many Good Women" which is a mixed-media installation layers a 1907 map of the Crow Reservation with present-day images of crow women, positioned over their ancestral land plots. The purpose behind this piece was to be a sense of importance to her people such as Native Americans mirroring themselves as natives instead of being viewed as a foreign race of people. This shows us how Red Star tries to idealize the way people look at Native Americans despite the racist point of views. This piece also works like mythology as it serves a social purpose by telling the tales of who originally owned the lands before these laws took place.
We were also introduced to Kambui Olujimi whose work was similar to Red Star’s but also different. His work consisted of 12 lithographs. A difference between the two would be Olujimi’s work focusing on a series of sky constellations. They were also similar by both works responding to mythology and having culture related to their work. Olujimi’s constellations each had their own story assigned to each month with a different mythic narrative. In the end, both communicate universal messages. Both Olujimi and Red Star want their stories and art to be shown and make people want to dig deeper into their work to wonder what they are doing and why they are doing it. I would have to say that my own project can connect with the work in the museum by wanting to have the same concept of mystery where people would have to dig deeper into the work to get a better understanding on how I am deciding to express my identity.
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