Minori Chugenji
HUA195.1386
Prof. Hugo Fernandez
May 31st tour, 2007
Review: #6
“Off the Map” at National Museum of the American Art
“Off the Map” has exhibited at National Museum of the American Art in
New York from March 3 to September 3, 2007. This exhibition is about a
relationship between Native people and place. The relationship of Native people
to place, historically and metaphysically, is well documented by visual art and
literary arts for many years. For more than 500years, land has also been a site
and source of conflict and struggle with outsiders. As a subject for Native artists,
land is home, culture, and identity which are really important issue for the
Natives, and those Native artists have expressed those feeling in their art. Also
those arts represent violence, isolation, and loss.
Flowing Water, 2006
Mixed media on
Paper canvas
130 x100 cm
Collection of the artist
Emmi Whitehorse has always worked on about land and been aware of
surroundings. She always has appreciated the beauty of Nature. There are
always calm and beauty behind her works. But she has concerned that we are
no longer aware of that. Her work is light, space and color which are the axis
around that her works evolves.
Her work background is of course Navajo culture. Her ethereal work explores
memory and land, because she was raised in a desert climate.
Standing Water, 2002
Oil on paper, canvas
130 x 100 cm.
For me her works are totally abstract which doesn’t look to relate any nature or
places. But that was her intention which makes her works rich and imaginative
artworks.
Another work from this exhibition was by James Lavadour. His work is totally
different from Emmi’s one. As he said, he really cares about very detail of the
landscape which makes his paint really dynamic, He know that how important to
put very tiny detail in the works.
Wall, 2006
Oil on board
122 x 152 x 5 cm.
Collection of Ernest C. Swigert
and Nate Overmeyer
“I am acutely aware of the surface of the canvas and every detail of what is happening in
the paint. The images that I see in the paint are memories of my living life, a vision of the
minutiae of experiences stimulated by looking into paint.
A painting seems to connect into the circuitry of the world both geologically and
perceptually which proves in his art.
It is hard to understand to live in there as Natives.
Actually I do not see the
difference between native works and other people. However I really inspired by the way
they create the art. It is beyond the difference the way of live or nationality,
Also the way of putting those works in the museum was very simple which
make viewers to be absorbed in the space. I really feel comfortable in there
which those artists might want us to feel in there.