Original

In an exhibition setting, the 2 videos play side by side.
Both videos have the same imagery – one with & one without title.
Because they are slightly different lengths, the imagery is staggered.
So if possible, watch them together, on a large screen,
simultaneously, in smallscreen mode.

Original (clips)
Non-linear projected video diptych. Video loop lengths = 11’42 min & 11’20 min

installation documentation & video stills – click on any image to enlarge

Site-specific installation created for the large gallery window of Grace Exhibition Space in Brooklyn, NY. The imagery, centered around ‘Baby Buffalo’, a young traditional dancer, both maintains and undermines Native stereotypes.

Images of buffalo, traditional dancers, and painted horses are interspersed with footage of Native youth and community in street wear as they walk around the outside of the powwow arbour (know as ‘doing laps’). In contrast with the traditional regalia of the dancers, the youth wear urban hip-hop inspired clothing, whose cultural source is the very area & streets of NY the installation was created for.

In its installation format, two projections of the same looped imagery played side by side from dusk until morning. Each video was a slightly different length, so that each of the projections’ images were always in a different relationship to one another.

The work is in part an act of sharing the beauty of the Cree world. The contrast, connections & dialogues created by placing these particular images in a hyper-urban, multi-ethnic location, also mirror the First Nations’ dichotomy of trying to balance two (or more) worlds (indigenous/colonial/colonized/global/etc). This balancing is both internal and external, personal and communal.

The video footage also includes shots moving across the prairie – seen from a car window – not the back of a horse.. It becomes a record of traversing not only the land, but the distance between dispirit cultures, locations & eras.

The projection was made specifically for the street audience of a busy area of Bushwick, a predominantly African/Latin American neighborhood in Brooklyn. The painterly, soft, and yet dramatic qualities of the video make a strong impact, particularly unexpected in the hard-edged hustle of this area. The relationships between imagery & location cross-reference and juxtapose the origins of cultures & their cultural regalia – both Indigenous & Urban – and explores how they merge.

There was a poignancy for me in projecting these images in other marginalized communities. In their familiar struggle to place me, Brooklyn locals more often than not assume that I’m Latin American. This is not particularly surprising, since many Latin American folks have Indigenous ancestry, so we may be a similar genetic mix, but it’s interesting and ironic how seldom even these people recognize myself – or other Native people – for who we are.

As a contemporary yet traditionally informed introduction to the artist’s First Nation, Original is both celebratory and insistent in its affirmative presence, communication and education. Through both its imagery and use of digital technology, it is a real-time reminder of Indigenous and North American history, and of our continued existence and indescribably important role here – things perhaps even more easily overlooked or forgotten in urban environments.

The projection of one place and/or culture within another also speaks to the current dramatic cultural, environmental and even conceptual changes created by technology. The use of symbolically/stereotypically Native imagery placed within the most urban of environments emphasizes not only the scale and speed at which things can change as a result of different technologies, but also the importance of healthy cultural approaches in our employment of them – an awareness that is central to most Indigenous worldview.

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note: Th pe scale of this piece is adaptable for exhibition in alternative locations & environments.