Myths, home, and self-portraiture

On our trip to the Newark Museum we got to experience the work of Wendy Star and Kambui Olujimi. Kambui Olujimis work consisted of a show in the planetarium accompanied with constellation pieces that gave a better explanation of the story. Wendy Stars work consisted of photography and multimedia and explores the intersections between Crow culture and the American mainstream. Both artists give powerful views into their culture and the myths behind them.
Wendy Stars portrays her native american culture in all of her works. The piece that stood out the most was the Sweat lodge that she set up in the middle of her gallery space. The piece titled Home is Where My Tipi Sits(sweat lodges) 2011 is a literal sweat lodge with a video playing on the inside of the desert. This show that home can be literally anywhere. She continues showing here "home" by showing pictures of makeshift tipis in reservations in the United States of America. I believe her goal is to show the terrible state of reservations around the United States and how Native American are forced to call this their home.
Skywriters by Kambui Olujimi is a contemporary art piece done as a video made for The planetarium at the Newark Museum. The film is also paired with a series of prints called Constellations that are located right outside of the planetarium. Both are based on the characters and mythic narrative in Olujimis novella, Wayward North. Skywriters is a an immersive work of art, a collage of space and time projected onto the night sky of the Planetarium’s dome. Constellations is a related series of 12 lithographic prints.
In the story the main characters name is Iku and he works at an orphanage. He starts being fed crystals that reveal secrets to him and decides to go on a journey to find the mother of secrets. Everyone tells him that searching for the mother of secrets is a bad idea but he decides to go anyway. He starts to journey across the desert and runs across an array of characters that take his journey into interesting turns and paths. The story is an abstract surreal journey that works really well with the visuals of the film.
The story was a little hard to follow but it did remind me of other mythological stories ive read from greek mythology. The Story that comes to mind is the one about Persephone and Hades. The Story involves Hades falling for Persephone and doing everything he can to make her his wife. He ends up kidnapping her and taking her to the underworld and Inevitably decided to stay with her new husband Hades. Persephones mother Demeter becomes furious but a resolution is found and persephone spends half her time in the underworld and half her time on earth. This is why there is the changing of the seasons. This story reminds me of Skywriters because of how they both go threw this journey to find love and a resolution.
As far as my self portrait I do not intend on adding a mythological aspect to it because of the direction I am going in but i can appreciate the many ways that both of these artist have decide to interpret Myths, home, and self-portraiture.