Frohawk Two Feathers: You Can Fall: The War of the Mourning Arrows

YOU CAN FALL: THE WAR OF THE MOURNING A RROWS A N I NTRODUCTION TO THE A MERICAS AND A R EQUIEM FOR WILLEM FERDINAND

YOU CAN FALL: THE WAR OF THE MOURNING A RROWS A N I NTRODUCTION TO THE A MERICAS AND A R EQUIEM FOR WILLEM FERDINAND

YOU CAN FALL: THE WAR OF THE MOURNING A RROWS A N I NTRODUCTION TO THE A MERICAS AND A R EQUIEM FOR WILLEM FERDINAND

VISUAL A RTS CENTER OF NEW JERSEY

A PRIL 26 – JUNE 30, 2013

R UTH AND E LMER WELLIN MUSEUM OF A RT H AMILTON COLLEGE

SEPTEMBER 28 – DECEMBER 22, 2013

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FROM T HE VISUAL A RTS CENTER OF NEW JERSEY The Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is proud to close out its 2012-2013 exhibition season with the work of Frohawk Two Feathers, an artist who uses contemporary art to re-examine and re-invent 18th century history. You Can Fall: The War of the Mourning Arrows (An Introduction to the Americas and a Requiem for Willem Ferdinand) is an exhibition that blends real and imagined history and reflects the geography of New York and New Jersey. The work prompts visitors to reconsider their relationships to history and the people who made it.

We are very happy that the exhibition will travel to the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College in the fall. It has been a pleasure to collaborate with them.

I thank our Curator, Mary Birmingham, for bringing this artist to our attention and for organizing this important exhibition. I am grateful to art historian, Ellen C. Caldwell, for her insightful and scholarly essay contextualizing Two Feathers’ work. I am especially indebted to Jay Lehman and Sally Morgan Lehman who, in partnership with their staff at Morgan Lehman Gallery, provided invaluable assistance with every aspect of the exhibition. In addition, I would like to thank several other lenders whose generosity enabled us to present a well-rounded exhibition: Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, Adam Baumgold, Ruth Dreessen and Tom Van Laan, Holly Hotchner, John Studzinski, and Jennifer Vorbach. I offer special thanks to Merrill Lynch Wealth Management Bank of America Corporation for their financial support of this exhibition. opposite: Map of North America (1787 – 1789): War and Pointless and Unending Conflict Is The Reason For The Season. Ya Heard! (detail of Plate 3)

We are especially grateful to Frohawk Two Feathers, who not only created this remarkable body of site-specific works, but also traveled to New Jersey to share his artistic vision with our audiences. As part of our Arts Alive Initiative, one hundred high school students from Jefferson Arts Academy in Elizabeth, New Jersey had an opportunity to meet the artist and create artwork in response to the exhibition. Inspired by Two Feathers’ process, each student invented and mapped an imaginary world, incorporating themes of history, language, geography and culture. I am grateful to Cara Bramson, Interim Director of Programs, who oversees this in-depth educational program that expands students’ knowledge and understanding of contemporary art.

I thank Exhibitions Manager Katie Murdock, Design & Publications Manager Kristin Maizenaski, Exhibitions Associate Yadira Hernandez and my entire staff for their hard work and commitment to all that we do. I extend special gratitude to our Board of Trustees who support all our efforts to bring art and people together.

Marion Grzesiak Executive Director, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

FROM T HE RUTH AND E LMER WELLIN MUSEUM OF A RT The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art, in partnership with the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, is thrilled to present You Can Fall: The War of the Mourning Arrows (An Introduction to the Americas and a Requiem for Willem Ferdinand), a new solo exhibition featuring the work of Frohawk Two Feathers. This exhibition is particularly appropriate for the Wellin because it mines a shared cultural past while referencing popular culture, making history accessible and relatable to an audience of Hamilton College students, faculty, and the broader community. Furthermore, it provides teaching opportunities around themes of indigenous and colonial narratives, race, gender, and contemporary art, among other subjects. Two Feathers presents an imagined version of history that results in an alternate reality, encouraging a discourse on the nature of memory and our perception of historic truths while positing potential outcomes not previously envisioned. His lush and provocative portraits, maps, and related works chronicle both a romanticism and brutality, often within a single frame. Protagonists, some dressed in finery and others almost stripped bare, confront the viewer with tales of war, personal tragedies, and triumphs that connect with our personal and collective experiences and offer something new.

For this exhibition, Two Feathers created several works specifically for the Wellin Museum.

They respond to the real history of the region and include the artist’s own interpretive spin. As an academic museum, we often ask the question: How do we unravel the history of objects? We consult with our colleagues in various disciplines across campus to offer new perspectives and draw upon their expertise in an attempt to address this enduring challenge. Two Feathers opens the door to this line of inquiry, innately and fundamentally, by presenting the audience with a vision of a world that offers glimpses of our own.

One does not have to look far to connect Two Feathers’ references with the history he explores. Only a few steps from Two Feathers’ interpretations, art of the ancient Americas and Native American pottery, baskets, and ritual objects from the Wellin Museum’s permanent collection are on view in Archive Hall and the Object Study Gallery, thoughtfully curated by Susanna White, Associate Director and Curator of the Wellin Museum.

These objects of material culture inform and broaden our understanding of the imagery employed by Two Feathers. This alignment of old and new, of real and imagined, evinces a pluralistic approach to understanding the past and offers new insights into personal and cultural identity.

The Wellin Museum is greatly indebted to Mary Birmingham, Curator of the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey, an outstanding curator and true champion of contemporary art.

When she brought this project to my attention, I was eager to collaborate. Her curatorial vision, attention to detail, and enthusiasm for the artist has touched everyone on staff at the Wellin Museum. We feel fortunate to share this exhibition with the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey. We are also grateful to Frohawk Two Feathers for creating such a unique and imaginative series of works, and to Jay Lehman and Sally Morgan Lehman at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York City for their unparalleled support of this project.

Tracy L. Adler Director, Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art Hamilton College

PERSONALIZING H ISTORY

BY MARY BIRMINGHAM

The 18th century French Enlightenment philosopher Voltaire is widely quoted as stating, “History consists of a series of accumulated imaginative inventions.”1 This observation also aptly describes the work of Frohawk Two Feathers, an artist whose complex and inventive narratives re-imagine 18th century imperial and colonial history. Since 2006, the Los Angeles-based artist has chronicled the mythic global struggles between two imaginary superpowers—the Frenglish Empire (an amalgamation of France, the United Kingdom and Ireland) and the Kingdom of Holland and Zeeland. An ingenious storyteller, the artist relies on historical research as well as his own boundless imagination to construct what he calls “a twisted tale filled with heroes and villains, gods and demons.”2 You Can Fall: The War of the Mourning Arrows (An Introduction to the Americas and a Requiem for Willem Ferdinand) takes place between 1787 and 1789 in New Sweden (present-day New Jersey) and Nieuw Holland, (present-day New York) and recounts the tragic fall of New Sweden. Based on his extensive research into the actual history and geography of the region, the artist has created intricate ink and acrylic portraits of the story’s main protagonists, narrative battle scenes and maps, flags of the warring nations, paintings on animal hide and ethnographic artifacts. A mashup of real and invented history, Two Feathers’ retelling is playful and provocative, and filled with “imaginative inventions.”

opposite: In My Younger Days I Used to Sport a Stag (As an Offering to the Snakes) (detail of Plate 1)

The works in the exhibition are purposefully made to resemble historical paintings, documents and artifacts fashioned by anonymous hands, reflecting the various backgrounds and specific viewpoints of their makers. In The Death of Jacoulet, the Frenglish Admiral Thierry Jacoulet, considered by the Dutch to be a ruthless and evil villain, is portrayed almost as a martyr, with the Egyptian god, Horus present and mourning at the death scene.

This bias reflects the outlook of the painting’s presumed Frenglish maker. The story of The Siege and Massacre of Fort Christiana is painted on an animal skin in the pictographic style of Native American hide paintings and ledger books, suggesting the hand of an anonymous Native American artist. Two Feathers has even studied calligraphy to make his hand-written inscriptions on pseudo-historic maps and documents appear authentic and period-appropriate.

A compelling cast of characters is at the heart of every Two Feathers’ narrative, comprising military figures, aristocrats, slaves, scouts, traders, assassins, political leaders, prisoners, child soldiers, mercenaries, rebels, and undercover insurgents. The War of the Mourning Arrows includes several characters who were introduced in the artist’s previous narratives and some who are new to this story, including a few with ties to the Lenape and Iroquois people indigenous to the geographic regions where this story unfolds. Characters may disappear and re-emerge at various points in the story. Willem Ferdinand, the slain king of Holland and Zeeland figures in this story even though he was killed many years earlier, in 1750. As the father of Ineke, he is a progenitor of the war’s story, and his presence permeates the narrative.

The artist represents characters of varied (and often mixed) ethnicities and races. Two Feathers offers a broad spectrum of dark-skinned people who are as likely to be rulers as they are slaves. Additionally, he often features strong women in leadership positions: Ineke, ruler of New Amsterdam; Christiana, Vicereine of New Sweden; the warrior Jocasta and the assassin Halima all play important roles in The War of the Mourning Arrows. One of the artist’s goals in creating such diverse characters is to elevate the anonymous and unknown individuals history largely ignores, inventing lives and stories for them. Simultaneously critiquing and exploiting the subjective nature of history, Two Feathers posits an alternative to the Euro-centric, white male-dominated story of Western civilization. By privileging the “other” (those normally overlooked due to race, gender or class), he challenges us to consider the untold part of the story, or to imagine it differently.

Although these characters never actually existed, they may function as empowered surrogates for lost or forgotten people. Reviewing one of Two Feathers’ recent exhibitions, Ana Holguin observed, “In creating these characters, he imagines a history in which people of color make the rules, set the fashions, mark the territory...the insertion of color in this way not only creates a picture of pride and power where we rarely see one (as in a museum setting) but also critiques the level to which white history has been constructed as Truth.”3

While we tend to view people from the past collectively, Two Feathers’ work asks us to see them as unique individuals—another way of personalizing history. Basing them on historical figures or composite types, he models his invented characters on friends and family members who pose for him. His use of people personally connected to him helps underscore the idea that we are all linked to people from the past and that each of us has a personal connection to our shared history. Two Feathers’ portraits remind us that history is filled with people “just like us,” and they emphasize the concept that it is people who create history—both as participants and witnesses.

If we see ourselves in Two Feathers’ characters, this may be due in part to the framing device he incorporates for the portraits, resembling both a mirror and a tombstone: “The frame I use to make the outline came from a mirror, so it’s like people are looking at themselves when they look at my portraits. The shape also references a gravestone because everyone in the series eventually dies.”4 Gazing into these mirrors of history confronts us with the idea that death is our ultimate shared destiny, layering the past and future onto the present.

Two Feathers’ narrative scenes often incorporate elements borrowed from disparate sources and vastly different time periods. This creates a permeable boundary between the past and the present, enabling viewers to engage in a kind of virtual time travel. The Siege of Fort Ferdinand or The Effects of Propaganda on Children includes the goddess Isis and several other Egyptian deities, Latin inscriptions, and stylized cartoon-like figures based on Native American ledger paintings. This multiplicity of cultural references and historical eras may invite even broader readings. For instance, while not directly referencing it, the row of multi-colored horses in this work resembles sections of the medieval Bayeux Tapestry, and for many viewers the array of warriors ascending the stepped levels of the fortress may suggest video games of the 1980s.

Similarly, coffee and tea perform various functions in Two Feathers’ work. The artist uses them to stain and distress his paper, both as a formal aesthetic device and as a conceptual nod to the role these commodities played in exploration, conquest and exploitation during the colonial period. Contemporary viewers are likely to bring an awareness of the completely different role coffee plays in today’s popular culture. They may also recognize Two Feathers’ use of unconventional art making materials as a significant element of contemporary art.

While the portraits appear worn and aged like historical documents and echo the compositions of conventional colonial portraiture, many of the subjects’ clothes, adornments and accoutrements derive from contemporary popular culture. The clothing seamlessly melds period-appropriate garb with contemporary fashion, and the numerous facial and body tattoos incorporate motifs borrowed from gang and prison culture. Two Feathers has developed a complex codified system of tattoo symbols that help identify aspects of his characters’ lives and affiliations.

The titles of his portraits reveal additional connections to contemporary popular culture, with words and phrases that reference hip hop, urban slang, and song lyrics. The exhibition title derives from “You Can Fall,” a song by the British indie electronic band, Broadcast, which deals with the myriad ways people fall. Two Feathers considers this eerie and ominous song a requiem for Willem Ferdinand, reminding us that empires can fall, but so can anything and anyone else. The fluidity with which the viewer can move from past to present, from real to imaginary, and from historic to contemporary in Two Feathers’ work gives it a dynamic quality not always present in actual historical objects.

The artist has applied revisionist tactics in crafting his own story. Born Umar Rashid in Chicago, he adopted Frohawk Two Feathers as an artistic alias when he moved to Los Angeles in 2000. Like the identities he fashions for his characters, this assumed persona allows him to operate beyond the borders of expected perceptions and re-invent his personal history.

Ultimately, Two Feathers personalizes history by taking ownership of and redirecting the story. His personal spin re-imagines history, providing a different lens through which others may choose to see. This is what historians often do. Because it is both selective and subjective, all history is revisionist to a degree. Each successive telling of a historical event alters it slightly, and each narrator skews it minutely. While it can be scrupulously truthful, history cannot convey absolute truth. No history tells the entire story or provides a 360-degree view of the past, but with its “imaginative inventions,” the art of Frohawk Two Feathers expands the horizon and offers a wider view.

Mary Birmingham is the Curator at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey.

NOTES 1

Szasz, Ferenc, “Quotes About History,” hnn.us. History News Network, 26 Dec. 2005. <http://hnn.us/ articles/1328.html>. (accessed April 18, 2013).

2

Frohawk Two Feathers in conversation with the author, Feb. 6, 2013.

3

Ana Holguin, “(Re)Inventing the Past,” The Idler. <http://idlermag.com/2012/07/25/reinventing-thepast/> (accessed Feb. 22, 2013).

4

Frohawk Two Feathers quoted in Ellen C. Caldwell, “Reframing History: In the Studio with Frohawk Two Feathers,” New American Paintings. <http://newamericanpaintings.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/reframinghistory-in-the-studio-with-frohawk-two-feathers/> (accessed Feb. 22, 2013).

MYTH, M IDTOPIA, AND M APPING:

FROHAWK T WO FEATHERS AND THE M AKING OF THE FRENGLISH EMPIRE

BY ELLEN C. CALDWELL

Over the past decade, Frohawk Two Feathers has invented, developed, and transcribed a complex narrative and painted history of “Frengland,” the imaginary unified region of France and England. Juxtaposing a mix of realistic life-size portrait paintings with more stylized, cartoon-like line drawings of his subjects, Two Feathers explores the legacies of imperialism through a complex re-imagining of history. His stories weave in and out of history, walking a fine line between revisionism and historical fiction as his characters traverse and conquer empires internationally—from Europe, to the Caribbean, to the Arctic Tundra, to South Africa, and all the way to Denver and Manhattan (geographic areas mandated by his historical references or the locations of museum exhibitions).

With acrylic paintings on faux-aged paper, xerographic transfers on wood, paintings on hand-stretched hides, sculptural drums, and protective war garments, he creates a fictitious world of conquest that reflects a historical colonial past. However, these updated, transposed empires and characters also reflect a contemporary reworking of imperialism and memory-making at its finest. Two Feathers inserts his characters into ironic, humorous and re-contextualized poses, situations, and titles. Besides his obvious love for and infatuation with recasting history and emphasizing the problems of our opposite: “Son, it's on!” (detail of plate 24)

imperial past, his work is also influenced by current popular culture, music, and research—revealing as much about the artist’s memory and subconscious as the ways in which history is recalled, retold, and celebrated in the American psyche.

Two Feathers differs from artists preceding him in the ways he reflects upon, taps into, and historicizes a rich and complex trove of colonial tropes, while paradoxically acting both within and against the traditional (and canonical) European art of empire.

fig. 1

In Two Feathers’ first solo show, Last Night After the Lights Went Out, We Fell, in 2006 at Taylor De Cordoba (fig. 1), his style resembled that of Jean Michel Basquiat, with his graffiti referents and cryptic social commentary, and Antoine de SaintExupéry’s The Little Prince, with his tender and slight portraiture. By 2008, however, his characters, medium, content, and narrative matured, taking on a more distinctive voice and style that continue to evolve today. Using friends to pose as models for his epic retelling of history, Two Feathers has become more precise, naturalistic, and purposeful in depicting more lifelike and realistic imagined rulers, enriching his Frenglish saga (fig. 2). Through his work, Two Feathers creates a master narrative of the Frenglish Empire, recasting imperial history through intersections of race, class, and gender, using humor and irony to offset the horror and tragedy.

fig. 2

FROHAWKIAN T ROPES AND M IDTOPIC NARRATIVES Theoretically, Two Feathers recreates, revises, and rewrites history; he does not do so to whitewash it nor does he do so to recast it the way he would have wanted things to be. In this sense, it is neither dystopic nor utopic, but rather somewhere in between in a liminal space I term “midtopia.” With Two Feathers’ stories of Frengland, he does not desire to fig. 1: Emperor Nancy Heckled by his Peers, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 48 x 36 inches. Private collection. Photo courtesy of the artist and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA. fig. 2: “Destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it” (Plate 2)

reassure us of our fortuitous futures or correct the blunders of the past, but rather he wants to question and reconstruct it entirely. With Frengland, Frohawk Two Feathers explores the midtopic potential and prospect for the world if two colonial powerhouses had united.

In his words: I wanted to create a story, one that I’m directly connected to, by having its roots in the Transatlantic slave trade, and one that connects all people as a legacy of our “shared” past, regardless of which side we were on. The two nations I decided to base Frengland upon [France and England] were two of the most powerful empires in the colonial period and spanned the entire globe. Yet, they were always in a period of almost continuous warfare with each other. So, I decided that if they were somehow able to unite, what, if any would the effect be upon the rest of the world.1 Instead of correcting the past, Two Feathers begs the question, “what if ” as he asks himself: What if history had been different? How would it change? What would change? And, how do I fit into this narrative? He speculates about the fated Frenglish Empire, offering a glimpse of his impetus, goals, and distinctly non-utopic revision: Slavery, unfortunately would have still have been in effect but would have ended with the ascension of Nancy of Gonaives ( former slave, loosely based on Haitian Revolutionary hero, Toussaint L’Ouverture) to the Imperial Frenglish throne. So essentially what I have created is a realistic fantasy where one half of the story is rooted in historical events and the other half, speculation.2 Here, his speculation is key. He implements a familiar history in order to theorize, fantasize, and wonder about history and the history-making process itself.

Compositionally, Two Feathers’ works often contain a combination of text and image— whether in his detailed maps of empire, grand portraits of rebellion leaders and company soldiers, or his propaganda advertisements pushing the goods of the colonies. In the following sections, I explore some of these “Frohawkian tropes”—portraiture, tattoos, maps, and advertisements—that he implements to retell the tales of empire.

PORTRAITURE Eighteenth and nineteenth century European portraiture was used to convey wealth, show and reinforce status, and visualize social and political rank. Two Feathers directly plays on this well-studied trope by shaking it up, inverting it, and destabilizing its well-established hierarchical system.

Two Feathers ages his paintings to look old and recall the historical portraits of European generals, soldiers, and rich gentry. However, his work also recalls ethnographic portraiture of the colonies. In an effort to justify an assertion of power over the colonies, imperialists often made or commissioned anthropological and ethnographic constructions, case

fig. 3

studies, and drawings to study and categorize their new subjects. These emphasized physical differences and enforced stereotypes, under the guise of science, thus using a pseudoscience to hold and enforce power over a people. With Two Feathers’ portraiture he recalls both the celebratory portraiture of the aristocratic bourgeoisie and the demeaning ethnographic classification drawings. Doing so, he destabilizes traditional portraiture conventions. He uses friends and professional contacts as his subjects, creating an alternative time continuum wherein the historical is quite literally updated with the present, and where the sitters hold greater power in how they are depicted—something entirely unseen in traditional ethnographic portraiture.

Within his portraiture, Two Feathers uses costumes and props to situate a character, narrative, and history. These props often serve as cues to the viewer, causing us to recall certain histories and referents— if only subconsciously. In You Know What it is from the Moment You Come Over the Bridge (fig. 3), for instance, Two Feathers depicts the fictional Jacques Charbonneau wearing a red fez with a tassel, sitting with an upright posture and confrontational gaze.

By the nineteenth century, fezzes had become synonymous with African soldiers of colonial armies, particularly that of the French. Here, Charbonneau represents the Company Crocodile, an “elite mulatto fighting force” from Haiti.3 In many ways, the image fig. 4 of the red hat on a dark-skinned man has come to be a stereotypical headpiece of difference—essentially a familiar, recognizable way to indicate Otherness. Made infamous by the French cocoa company Banania4 (established in 1912 and still sold in France today), their logo of an African man wearing a fez (fig. 4) is commonly repeated in their advertisements and on souvenir mugs or tins—something historian Patricia A. Turner refers to as “contemptible collectibles.”5 Two Feathers places the fez on Charbonneau, as well as countless other characters throughout the course of the Frenglish saga, and in doing so, he plays on an image that fig. 3: “You know what it is from the moment you come over the bridge” (Plate 7) fig. 4: 1917 advertisement for Banania

many viewers would be familiar with—if only subconsciously. But by switching the gaze and facial expression of the person wearing the fez from the stereotypical and haunting smile of the Banania man to the confrontational and threatening gaze of Charbonneau (made more meddlesome by the poised weapons he holds in his hands), he shifts a predominant image from popular culture—subverting the assumed or imposed power structure as well. Charbonneau owns this pose and stance, thus reclaiming a highly contested and controversial image.6

TATTOOS Another elaborate visual cue Two Feathers utilizes within his portraits are tattoos.

Inhabiting a world with a dense and complex system of tattoos, Two Feathers’ characters wear a coded language on their faces and bodies, distinguishing them from one trading company or another, pledging their allegiance to a certain place or empire, and carrying their own history of accomplishments, failures, woes, and heartaches on their physical bodies.

In the Imperial Tattoo System, 2010 (fig. 6), Two Feathers uses a combination of visual imagery and text to detail and map out his complicated language of tattoos. Two Feathers explains the origins of the Imperial Tattoo System and how the Frenglish military was ultimately responsible for the spread of tattoos throughout the empire. After the military picked up tattoos as a unifying marking system, it also inspired the upper elite Frenglish class (much as it historically happened in Britain) and moved the trend of tattoos around rapidly as the empire expanded and as soldiers eventually returned to their homelands. As Frenglish history goes, uniforms were scarce, so inking was required “to distinguish friend from foe,” so that tattoos essentially became fig. 5 uniforms of the skin.7 The system dictated certain tattooing structures: a teardrop under the right or left eye (depending on your gender) if you had killed (based on the common teardrop prison tattoos in contemporary U.S. and Mexico). In Two Feathers’ words: Next to that, the name of the country they served would be written. And underneath the name of the country, a weapon would be placed (indicating one’s willingness to die for that

fig. 5: A Modest Proposal or I Hold Heat Nonchalantly (detail of Plate 16)

country). On the opposite side of the face, a heart and the name of your most cherished person or thing was placed under the eye….8 And so it goes on from there, including cheek and neck tattoos to distinguish specialized units and military groups to which the wearer belonged—echoing a similar use of tattoos in the American military.

Like colonial portraiture, the history of tattoos is complicated. And to tell the tale of the rise and spread of tattoos is also to tell the tale of global history, cultural expansion, shared traditions, and of course, colonialism. To start, tattoos are a form of self-marking, largely chosen and specified by the wearer. Culturally, they vary in purpose, size, and form, but they can tell a multitude of tales ranging from that of genealogy, to status, to earned rank, to deeds done, distant lands visited, and victories won. Believed to have Polynesian roots, tattoos migrated worldwide (though it is arguable that different forms of tattoos, or permanent bodily markings, existed simultaneously on multiple continents), tattoos, or “tatau” to the Samoans and “moko” to the Maori, have always carried a great power for the wearer—whether positive or negative.

Historically, they have been used for a variety of means and for different, oftencontradictory ends. Currently, people use them to self-fashion their identity and mark themselves with images that are near, dear, beloved, or missed. Incarcerated prisoners also use them as a means of reclaiming their bodies and expressing themselves in a place that otherwise does not allow. Scholar Deena Rymhs notes that prison tattoos “are often coded with meanings specific to the prisoner, are self-aware commentaries on how this space marks the prisoner.”9 Historically, however, Jewish prisoners were tattooed in Nazi concentration camps and in both India and France, incarcerated criminals were marked punitively against their will, as a permanent marker of their wrongdoings and pejorative past or fugitive status.10 For many Native Americans, tattoos were a way not only of visually commemorating a specific act of bravery in battle, but also of distinguishing one warrior from another. In early 20th century Europe, tattoos were seen in an almost entirely negative light (i.e., criminals, vagrants, and sailors), while in Britain at the same time, they were viewed as “an emblem of cultural elite.”11 Even King Edward VII of England and his son George V each picked up tattoos in the form of travel souvenirs, the former from Jerusalem and the latter from Japan.12 Regardless of the multiplicity of meanings, Two Feathers uses tattoos to tap into this deeply laden and rich symbology as a metanarrative to help guide and craft his work with his typical satirical and biting humor.13 While his tattoos may be comical in nature at times (such as Andre’s “Get Money” and “Rest in Powerdise” tattoos in The Death of Andre, 2012), they are often explicit critiques in tone and subject (such as “The Whole World is Going Insane” tattoo written across Captain Achilles St. Marc’s face in the advertisement Drink Away the Pain, 2011).

fig. 6: Imperial Tattoo System, 2010, acrylic, ink, coffee and tea on paper, 44 x 30 inches. Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY.

fig. 7: Drink Away the Pain, Antillean Rum advertisement featuring Capt. Achille St. Marc and his aide-de-camp Colin after the retaking of Dominica 1793 paid for by the Frenglish West India Company, 2011, acrylic, ink, coffee and tea on paper, 43 ž x 30 ½ inches. Private collection, courtesy of the artist and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA.

A DVERTISEMENTS Often deeply embedded in the inner workings of a colonial economy, import substitution is a process wherein the local, domestically-made product is substituted with a foreign, colonially-imported product, thereby replacing support for the local market economy with support for the colonial endeavor. Foreign advertisements in the colonies made import substitution much more effective in enticing customers to buy these newly introduced products.

Two Feathers made his first advertisement painting in 2011 for a Frenglish rum company entitled, Drink Away The Pain, Antillean Rum advertisement featuring Capt. Achille St. Marc and his aide-de-camp Colin after the retaking of Dominica 1793 paid for by the Frenglish West India Company (fig. 7). In this work and title, Two Feathers draws attention to and mocks the colonial business of import substitution and rather outright brainwashing tactics of colonial marketing. While 20th century alcohol advertisements often catered to new and more modern feelings of loneliness and isolation (i.e., “It’s your best friend” or “There is Happiness in Heineken”),14 Two Feathers removes the façade present in those types of slogans and instead translates his ad to quite literally say what lies underneath such false promises—that you will be drinking away the pain.

In You Can Fall, Two Feathers presents two more advertisement paintings in They Already Got Yo Kids (“Tricked my wisdom with the system that imprisoned my son”) and Son, it’s on!

(Plates 23 and 24). Two Feathers developed these ads in response to the present-day army commercials that look like video games and target marginalized youth of color—asking alluring questions such as, “Are you lonely?” “Do you dream of something else?” “Do you want to be all that you can be?”15 Just as with Drink Away the Pain, Two Feathers makes company recruitment propaganda that is far less veiled than the contemporary ads for the army and navy. Yet because of his paintings’ overt call to join the forces, he is clearly critiquing the watered-down and far more manipulative ads used to lure youth today.

M APS Maps are also integral to both Frohawk Two Feathers’ exhibitions and his Frenglish Empire. Just as with portraiture, Two Feathers uses a common tool of empire and expansion to tell the tale of Frengland. As historian Cynthia J. Van Zandt describes, early European voyageurs had very clear intentions with their maps: “They wanted to send maps that represented the territory, wealth and market power of the English kingdom.

For these merchants, the visual images on maps could be particularly useful in intercultural contacts where pictorial images, material goods, and gesture could be more important than words.”16 In works such as Map of the Caribbean: 1794 Come for the resources. Stay for the food. Bring your entire country. It’s Paradise. (fig. 8) and Map of North America (1787 – 1789): War and Pointless and Unending Conflict Is The Reason For The Season.

fig. 8: Map of the Caribbean: 1794 Come for the resources. Stay for the food. Bring your entire country. It’s Paradise., 2012, acrylic, ink, coffee and tea on paper, 44¾ x 60 inches. Photo courtesy of the artist and Taylor De Cordoba, Los Angeles, CA

fig. 9: Map of North America (1787 – 1789): War and Pointless and Unending Conflict Is The Reason For The Season. Ya Heard! (Plate 3)

Ya Heard! (fig. 9), Two Feathers is clearly motivated to record his maps in a similar way, embellishing them with images of material goods, battle sites, and all of the wealth and commodities found in his cartography.

Scientific historian Steven J. Harris refers to the “geography of knowledge” when discussing science and its influence upon global expansion and exploration.17 In fact, mapping and map-making, especially of foreign geographies, was a means of capturing, transcribing, and owning knowledge of the region. Similar to ethnographic sketches and trade inventory lists of commodities such as spices or dyes, the very documentation of maps was a way of capturing and possessing a snapshot of the power and potential of a given locale, in order to bring it back home.

Recording and mapping a place has to do with laying stakes to a claim and, quite literally, marking a territory. Possession is the underlying key to mapping—whether it be possession of a people, an actual geography, a local commodity, a labor force, or all of the above—and Two Feathers plays with all of this in his text. In Map of the Caribbean, three inconspicuous arrows on the side of the map point imprecisely from and towards Africa or Europe, saying: • From Europe: Faith-based weaponry, illusion, usury, pork, disease, pork, overall death, guns, tin, pirates, guns, pork, beer, spirits, questionable science, etc.

• From Africa: Free manual labor (not including shipping cost), gold, gold, kola nuts, palm oil, gold, cassava, yams, etc.

• To Africa: Nothing of actual value, foodstuffs (at an inflated cost), oh, maize, and chocolate.18 In Two Feathers’ shows, the maps are similar to his characters’ tattoos in the way that they serve as vessels for his stories of empire. His maps have become more and more sophisticated as he incorporates greater information and emphasizes more pictorial and aesthetic qualities. In Map of North America (1787 – 1789), Two Feathers combines many of his usual mapping techniques, marking the history of forts as empires rose or fell, citing goods traded and battles won, and tracing the paths of leaders as they battled and headquartered in various locations. Here, he also maps out the locations of his current and upcoming shows, demarcating both history and his story simultaneously. More arrows point to and from Europe, as if adding to his previous, woeful trade-wind-like markers, saying: • From Europe: More insanity, more bullshit sabre rattling, death, pork, taxes, manufactured goods.

• To Europe: Tobacco, indigo, tales of misery and suffering (all true), child soldiers/labor.19 As a viewer, one can always look to a map to see where all of the information for the exhibition is stored, both visually and verbally. Much like a legend on a map, Two Feathers’s maps are the keys to his shows, providing the necessary historical backgrounds to the specific chapter of the story at hand.

• In many senses, all of these Frohawkian tropes are forms of mapping. Portraits, maps, and advertisements are ways of capturing and possessing people, places, and markets. In this sense, Two Feathers uses the very art and practice of empire to put forth a coded and complicated retelling of history in the present.

In Marita Sturken’s Tangled Memories, she explores America’s unique cultural memory as a form of “cultural negotiation.”20 She “posit[s] cultural memory and history as entangled rather than oppositional.”21 Two Feathers’ work speaks to this. He purposefully explores our world’s history through his fictitious empire—and both are quite literally entangled with one another. When viewers see his art, they are part of an exchange between this entangled cultural memory and history—between Frengland and our world, between past and present—with reality being somewhere in the middle and midtopic region. Two Feathers sees this as an integral part of his work: I believe that as humankind we are the sum of our experiences, and, to a greater extent our collective memory. It’s just that sometimes we forget, consciously or otherwise, and need to re-explore the events in our shared past that makes us who we are today. In a way I’m trying to re-explore what it is to be an American. Our history as Americans is one born of conflict, and greed, stemming from the various European empires (English, French, Spanish) that brought us here in the first place. We didn’t all arrive here as unwilling pawns in an attempt at global military and mercantile dominance. But once here, we all began the search for our identity.22 While it is clear that Two Feathers searches for his identity through his art, he also forces viewers to do the same. Using a deep understanding of history and cultural memory, he takes the viewer on a ride that is at once trying, terrifying, and tumultuous in subject— though inspired, humorous, and thought provoking in resolve.

Ellen C. Caldwell is an art historian, writer, and a featured contributor to the New American Paintings blog.

She teaches art history at Mt. San Antonio College, Otis, and Pepperdine University, where she also works in curriculum assessment. She recently co-authored “‘Superpredators’ and ‘Animals’: Images and California’s ‘Get Tough on Crime’ Initiatives” in the Journal of the Institute of Justice & International Studies and curated “Recrafting History: History, Nostalgia, and Craft in the American Memory” at Taylor De Cordoba in 2011.

NOTES 1

Frohawk Two Feathers, Interview with author, March 4, 2008.

2

Ibid.

3

Frohawk Two Feathers, You Know What it is from the Moment You Come Over the Bridge, 2013.

4

For a further analysis, context, and critique of Banania, see Paul Stuart Landau and Deborah D. Kaspin, Images and Empires: Visuality in Colonial and Postcolonial Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks (New York: Grove Press, 1991); Jan Nederveen Pieterse, White on Black: Images of Africa and Blacks in Western Popular Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); and Laura Rice, “African Conscripts/European Conflicts: Race, Memory, and the Lessons of War,” Cultural Critique, no. 45 (2000).

5

Patricia A. Turner, Ceramic Uncles and Celluloid Mammies: Black Images and their Influence on Culture.

(Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002), 9.

6

Here, Frohawk’s portraits parallel a long list of post-colonial studies of images wherein the subject reclaims or takes ownership of “the gaze,” thus refusing to be “owned” by the photographer or painter and refuting the imposed ethnographic power structure. See works such as Karina Elieraas, “Reframing the Colonial Gaze”; Jordanna Bailkin’s “Making Faces: Tattooed Women and Colonial Regimes”; Malek Alloula, The Colonial Harem. Translated by Myrna and Wlad Godzich. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986); and Christraud Geary and Virginia Lee-Webb, ed. Delivering Views: Distant Cultures in Early Postcards.

(Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998).

7

Frohawk Two Feathers, Imperial Tattoo System, 2010.

8

Ibid.

9

Deena Rymhs, “Here the Country is Uncertain: Canadian Incarcerated Authors Trans-scribing Prison,” Biography v. 32, no. 1 (Winter 2009), p. 109.

10

Arnoud Balvay, “Tattooing and its Role in French Native American Relations in the Eighteenth Century,” French Colonial History, v. 9, 2008, p. 5.; Gwenda Morgan and Peter Rushton, “Visible Bodies: Power, Subordination and Identity in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World,” Journal of Social History, v. 39, no. 1 (Fall 2005), p. 47.

11

Jordanna Bailkin, “Making Faces: Tattooed Women and Colonial Regimes,” History Workshop Journal, Issue 59 (Spring 2005), p. 34.

12

Ibid, 43-44.

13

For more on the “biting” nature of his humor, see Ellen C. Caldwell, “Fact, Fiction, and Friction: Frohawk Two Feathers,” New American Paintings. <http://newamericanpaintings.wordpress.com/2011/11/11/factfiction-and-friction-frohawk-two-feathers/> (11 November 2011).

14

This type of advertisement slogan was prevalent in the colonies, particularly Ghana, Nigeria, and South Africa. Along with import substitution, these ads played upon new feelings and insecurities established during colonial regime changes and industrialization. Ellen C. Caldwell, “‘Make Life Worth Living’: Changing Images of Leisure, Modernity, and Masculinity, in Foreign and Domestic Alcohol Advertisements in The Daily Graphic and The Evening News, Ghana c. 1959-1962,” (Master’s thesis, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2002), 1-69.

15

Frohawk Two Feathers, Interview with the author, April 20, 2012.

16

Cynthia Jean Van Zandt, “Mapping and the European Search for Intercultural Alliances in the Colonial World,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 1, no.2 (Fall 2003), 72.

17

Steven J. Harris, “Long-Distance Corporations, Big Sciences, and the Geography of Knowledge,” Configurations 6.2, (1998), 269-304

18

Frohawk Two Feathers, Map of the Caribbean: 1794 Come for the resources. Stay for the food. Bring your entire country. It’s Paradise., 2012.

19

Frohawk Two Feathers, North America (1787 – 1789): War and Pointless and Unending Conflict Is The Reason For The Season. Ya Heard!, 2013.

20

Marita Sturken, Tangled Memories: The Vietnam War, the Aids Epidemic, and the Politics of Remembering (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 1.

21

Ibid., 5.

22

Frohawk Two Feathers, Interview with author, March 4, 2008.

YOU CAN FALL: THE WAR OF THE MOURNING A RROWS WORKS IN EXHIBITION

Descriptive texts were written by the artist.

opposite: The Siege of Fort Ferdinand or The Effects of Propoganda on Children (detail of Plate 22)

In My Younger Days I Used to Sport a Stag (As an Offering to the Snakes) 2013

State portrait of Willem Ferdinand, last king of Holland and Zeeland. Father of the rebel Ineke of Nieuw Holland. Willem was killed by his own subjects in 1750.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 1

“Destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it” 2013

Ineke, daughter of Willem Ferdinand, (slain king of Holland and Zeeland) and ruler of the colony of New Amsterdam. She rules from her capital on Manhattan Island. Made a deal with the Iroquois and their allies to destroy the Frenglish presence on the eastern seaboard of North America. Goes on the offensive and takes Fort Christiana on the Delaware River. The remainder of her war does not go so well, as she is forced to fight from a defensive position. She is finally killed at Fort Ferdinand when she is assassinated by one of Halima’s child soldiers. The fort isn’t taken and most of the Children’s Army is captured and killed. The death of Ineke serves as the only consolation. The leaderless Dutch now struggle with how to proceed.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 2

PLATE 3

Map of North America (1787 â&#x20AC;&#x201C; 1789) or

War and Pointless and Unending Conflict Is The Reason For The Season. Ya Heard!

2013

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 4

The Siege and Massacre at Fort Christiana 2013

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

Peace Is Not the Word to Play 2013

Samuel (real name unknown), referred to affectionately as Susquehanna Sam, was a sachem of the Susquehannock People.

At the time, they were a vassal state of the Iroquois. When Ineke made an arrangement with the Five Nations of the Iroquois Confederation for mutual defense, she asked that the Susquehannock be admitted into the confederation as a full member. Initially they refused but later recanted and allowed the Susquehannock in. Sam became the leader of his people and they were asked to lead the attack on Fort Christiana. They led the attack to a most devastating defeat for New Sweden.

Susquehanna Sam was killed at the Battle of Manhattan. Some suggest that he and Ineke had sexual relations.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 5

The Death of Jacoulet 2013

After arriving off the shores of New Sweden, Jacoulet and his bodyguard Punjab Pete went ashore to find women and coin.

He and Pete were surprised by two of Inekeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s scouts and Jacoulet was killed (impaled by a broken tree branch). Punjab Pete pleaded with the scouts to save Jacouletâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life but they refused and allowed Punjab Pete to return to his ship. They tortured and scalped Jacoulet and cut off his head. This incident further doomed Christiana and all of New Sweden. The enemies and victims of Admiral Thierry Jacoulet were overjoyed at his demise. Horus wept.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 6

â&#x20AC;&#x153;You know what it is from the moment you come over the bridge.â&#x20AC;?

2013

Jacques Charbonneau of Haiti was a member of the Company Crocodile (elite mulatto fighting force) and fought with distinction in the European theater of the Fifty Years War. He was recruited by the Frenglish West India Company to travel to New Sweden and conduct trade with the surrounding tribes in order to open new markets and acquire beaver pelts for the company. He traveled as far west as Cheyenne country. He was a fierce hunter and a natural diplomat. He too had a feeling that Ineke would move against a poorly administered New Sweden and left before his fears became true. He found a lover in Jocasta and he urged her to go with him. He managed to convince many others to leave as well. His only regret was leaving so many women and children behind, as they were massacred when Ineke took Fort Christiana. He vowed vendetta against Ineke and fought with all his heart against her.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 7

Look The Part, Act Like You Know Whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Up 2013

Jocasta, a mixed race woman of Lenape and African heritage, fought against Ineke and all of Nieuw Holland. She was a lover of Jacques Charbonneau and wore the helmet he brought her from his travels to the west. Although she abandoned Fort Christiana prior to falling to Inekeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s forces, she was an excellent equestrian, fighter, and tactician. She was mortally wounded during the Battle of Manhattan. A great loss.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 8

PLATE 9

Headgear for an Eventual Gorgeous Death 2013

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 10

The False Beard of Kingship A Death Mask of Ineke Made by Sam, Her Lover 2013

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Cast a spell on the country you run.â&#x20AC;? or

The Effects of Prison on Monarchy 2013 Eleonora, the daughter of Gustav, King of Denmark was not murdered as an infant during the Siege of Copenhagen in 1740 as was believed by many. Instead she was sent to New Sweden and kept in a dungeon. Taunted, and tortured daily for years she managed to continue and swore that she would get revenge on her fanatical captors at Fort Christiana. Her salvation finally arrived when Ineke attacked and burnt the fort. A Dutch soldier discovered a door which he believed led to treasure. Instead he found Eleonora poised to kill the first person who walked through the door.

She didn't and she was finally free.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 11

Tabac, Banane, et Akvavit or

Everything Around Us Is On Fire 2013

Christiana, Vicereine of New Sweden and her lover/servant Cicero, mere hours before she would be killed. Christiana was half-Sami and half Swedish and was appointed Vicereine of New Sweden as an insult to Queen Margarethe of Sweden.

Since she ruled in name only, she did not have the manpower or resources to repel any attack on the fort. Christiana, a fanatical Christian, urged her subjects to commit suicide if an attack came. Thousands fled to the west but her devoted faithful (and scores of women and children) decided to stay. Sadly, they were all murdered. Cicero was allowed to leave with his and Christianaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s child Freya.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 12

PLATE 13

Black Gold (MarĂŠchal Fontainebleau) 2010

Courtesy of Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York, NY

PLATES 14 & 15

The Wolf War 2010

John Studzinski Collection

The Hawk War 2010

A Modest Proposal or

I Hold Heat Nonchalantly 2013

Lord Darlington, a former Frenglish admiral, defected to the Dutch cause after his wife Laura was accused of being a traitor.

He raised a group of assassins to infiltrate Frenglish lines and ultimately succeeded in uniting the Dutch under a single banner.

Unfortunately Darlington was killed shortly after unification, at the Battle of Haarlem. Prior to his untimely death he made a visit to Ineke at Fortress Manhattan to ask her to join the United Provinces (Batavia) as a full partner. Ineke declined the offer, as the same lords who conspired to murder her father were members as well. Darlington left her 500 troops and three ships of the line as a token of good will and departed, never to return.

Courtesy of Ruth Dreessen and Tom Van Laan

PLATE 16

PLATES 17 & 18

Lord Darlington Drum 2010

Collection of Holly Hotchner

Darlingtonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Deadly Darlings 2010

Courtesy of Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York, NY

PLATES 18 & 20

One Two Five 2010

Private Collection

Queen Annika (Sentenced to Die) 2010

Collection of Jennifer Vorbach

I’m Gettin’ Mine in ‘89 2013

Halima was a Cape Malay slave who escaped the Cape Colony (South Africa) when it was taken by the Frenglish Empire during the 50 Years War. She miraculously made it to New Sweden and became an assassin. She lived at Fort Christiana but like almost everyone else, left just before the attack (siege) by Ineke and her allies. In the wilderness she trained the children to become soldiers and assassins. This would culminate in the ill-fated “Children’s Crusade” against a strategic fortification of Ineke’s in the upper region of Nieuw Holland. Her body was not found but nearly all of her trainees died fighting that bloody battle.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 21

The Siege of Fort Ferdinand or

The Effects of Propaganda on Children 2013 The Siege of Fort Ferdinand was a major operation launched by the Frenglish North American Company and commanded by the assassin Halima. Although this battle is often dubbed â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Children's Crusadeâ&#x20AC;? for the hundreds of children that died and were captured there, a number of adults participated as well.

This battle was planned to soften the way for the land and sea bombardment of Fortress Manhattan in New Amsterdam, the seat of power for Nieuw Holland. The attack was rushed and launched prematurely by the Sidneys. The cavalry and infantry fought very well but their lack of artillery would seal their fate.

In the end, those that were not killed outright were tortured and then killed. The others were impressed into service as servants.

Mostly all of the soldiers were from Frenglish indigo and rice plantations in South Carolina. (Their unit was called the Indigo Boys.) The rest of the soldiers were displaced Lenape who still remained allied to the Frenglish crown for whatever reason. The battle, though tragic for Frengland, was not a total wash as one of the Lenape managed to kill Queen Ineke with two arrows to the chest. The Dutch cause was in peril from that point on. It was no match for the lions.

Isis wept for the children.

John Studzinski Collection

PLATE 22

They Already Got Yo Kids (“Tricked my wisdom with the system that imprisoned my son”) 2013 An advertisement created by The Imperial Frenglish North America Company or F.N.A.C. urging the survivors of the Siege of Fort Christiana and other Frenglish subjects to allow their children to be trained for an offensive against the Dutch, due to a shortage of adults. The result was a fantastic disaster at the Siege of Fort Ferdinand (1789) where many children lost their lives. That phase of the war had been dubbed “The Children's Crusade” after a similar folly that occurred in 1212 in Jerusalem.

The image is of the Lenape Madonna. It was used to manipulate the strong religious convictions of the colonists of New Sweden.

It worked.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

They Already Got Yo Kids: Tricked my wisdom with the system that imprisoned my son (will be in Wellinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s You Can Fall)

PLATE 23

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Son, it's on!â&#x20AC;?

2013 Another Frenglish North American Company advertisement for able-bodied colonists to take up arms against the Dutch once again. This campaign was successful. The partisan cavalry performed quite well at Fort Ferdinand although the siege was ultimately a failure. The conniving Frenglish House of Sidney was in essence the power behind the throne (and the financiers of the Frenglish North America Company), and had succeeded in creating a formidable fighting force in North America. Their symbol is the serpent. Their patron god is Seth, the murderer of Osiris.

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 24

PLATE 25

War Drum 2013

Courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY

PLATE 26

Apollo in Irons. (“I need a new nigga for this black cloud to follow, ‘cause while it’s over me it’s too dark to see tomorrow.”)

2012

Collection of Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA Photo courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery

E XHIBITION CHECKLIST Apollo in Irons. (“I need a new nigga for this black cloud to follow, ‘cause while it’s over me it’s too dark to see tomorrow”)

2012 Acrylic, ink, coffee, and tea on paper 30 x 22 ½ inches Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, South Hadley, MA, purchase with the Belle and Hy Baier Art Acquisition Fund, 2012.19 Plate 26

Black Gold (Maréchal Fontainebleau)

Headgear for an Eventual Gorgeous Death

2013 Buffalo jawbones, elk hide, beaver fur, wood, deer lace 26 x 20 x 20 inches Plate 9

I’m Gettin’ Mine in ‘89

2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 44 x 30 inches Plate 21

Imperial Tattoo System

2010 Acrylic, ink, coffee, and tea on paper 30 x 22 ½ inches Courtesy of Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York, NY Plate 13

2010 Acrylic, ink, coffee, and tea on paper 44 x 30 inches Figure 6

Darlington’s Deadly Darlings

In My Younger Days I Used to Sport a Stag (As an Offering to the Snakes)

2010 Mixed media on animal hide 9 ¾ (diameter) x 2 ½ (depth) inches Courtesy of Adam Baumgold Gallery, New York, NY Plate 18

The Death of Jacoulet

2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 30 x 44 inches Plate 6

“Destined to live the dream for all my peeps who never made it” 2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 44 x 30 inches Plate 2 and Figure 2

Flag of Frengland

2013 Appliqued cotton 36 x 54 ¾ inches

Flag of Nieuw Holland

2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper.

44 x 30 inches Plate 1

Look The Part, Act Like You Know What’s Up

2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 44 x 30 inches Plate 8

Lord Darlington Drum

2010 Mixed media on animal hide 9 ¾ (diameter) x 2 ½ (depth) inches Collection of Holly Hotchner Plate 17

Map of North America (1787 – 1789) or

War and Pointless and Unending Conflict Is The Reason For The Season. Ya Heard!

2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 44 ¾ x 60 inches Plate 3 and Figure 9

2013 Appliqued cotton 36 x 54 ¾ inches

A Modest Proposal

The Hawk War

I Hold Heat Nonchalantly

2010 Mixed media on wood, animal hide, fur, feathers 16 ½ (height) x 12 ½ (diameter) inches John Studzinski Collection Plate 15

or

2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 44 x 30 inches Courtesy of Ruth Dreessen and Tom Van Laan Plate 16 and Figure 5

One Two Five

A DDITIONAL WORKS ON VIEW AT T HE RUTH AND E LMER WELLIN MUSEUM OF A RT

2010 Acrylic on elkskin 9 ¾ (diameter) x 2 ½ (depth) inches Private Collection Plate 19

“Cast a spell on the country you run.”

Peace Is Not the Word to Play

The Effects of Prison on Monarchy

Queen Annika (Sentenced to Die)

The False Beard of Kingship A Death Mask of Ineke Made by Sam, Her Lover

2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 44 x 30 inches Plate 5

2010 Mixed media on animal hide 9 ¾ (diameter) x 2 ½ (depth) inches Collection of Jennifer Vorbach Plate 20

The Siege and Massacre at Fort Christiana 2013 Acrylic on deerskin 62 x 46 inches Plate 4

Tabac, Banane, et Akvavit or

Everything Around Us Is On Fire

2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 30 x 44 inches Plate 12

War Drum

2013 Wood, elkskin, rifle slings, buffalo hair 24 (height) x 11 (diameter) inches Plate 24

The Wolf War

2010 Mixed media on wood, animal hide, fur 16 ½ (height) x 12 ½ (diameter) inches John Studzinski Collection Plate 14

or

2013 Acrylic, ink, coffee, and tea on paper 51 x 60 inches Plate 11

2013 Elk and deer hide, deer sinew, wire, horse hair, and acrylic 36 x 19 x 6 inches (overall) Plate 10

The Siege of Fort Ferdinand or

The Effects of Propaganda on Children 2013 Acrylic, ink, coffee, and tea on paper 44 x 60 inches John Studzinski Collection Plate 22

“Son, it's on!”

2013 Acrylic, ink, coffee, and tea on paper 46 x 30 inches Plate 24

They Already Got Yo Kids (“Tricked my wisdom with the system that imprisoned my son”) 2013 Acrylic, ink, coffee, and tea on paper 46 x 30 inches Plate 23

“You know what it is from the moment you come over the bridge” 2013 Acrylic, ink, tea, and coffee on paper 44 x 30 inches Plate 7 and Figure 3

All works courtesy of the artist and Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY, unless otherwise noted.

FROHAWK T WO FEATHERS Los Angeles-based artist Frohawk Two Feathers (Umar Rashid) is a storyteller, historian, musician and poet, who was born in Chicago, IL, in 1976 and earned a BA at Southern Illinois University in 2000. Recent solo exhibitions include: the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver, Colorado; Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV; Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; Taylor De Cordoba Gallery, Los Angeles, CA; and Stevenson Gallery, Cape Town, South Africa. A solo exhibition is scheduled for 2014 at the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut. Recent group exhibitions include “Stranger than Fiction” at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, “Opening Ceremony” at Morgan Lehman Gallery, New York, and “Else” at Tilton Gallery, New York. His work is in the collections of The Santa Barbara Museum of Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Progressive Corporation, and the 21C Museum, among others. Two Feathers’ work has been reviewed in Art in America, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications.

STAFF Marion Grzesiak, Executive Director Vanessa Batista, Interim Director of the Studio School Mary Birmingham, Curator Cara Bramson, Interim Director of Programs Ernie Palatucci, Director of Finance & Operations Rupert Adams, Building Superintendent Fabiana Bloom, Membership & Special Events Manager Dalila DeCarvalho, Studio School Associate Jen Doninger, Customer Relations Associate Deborah Farley, Customer Relations Associate Monica Finkel, Operations Manager AnnMarie Gervasio, Customer Relations Associate Yadira Hernandez N., Exhibitions Associate Kristin Maizenaski, Design & Publications Manager Alice Mateychak, Customer Relations Associate Teresa Mendez, Customer Relations Associate Katherine Murdock, Exhibitions Manager Bonnie-Lynn Nadzeika, Grants Coordinator Anne Ortengren, Communications & Marketing Manager Barbara Smith, Registrar

Visual Arts Center of New Jersey

68 Elm Street, Summit, NJ 07901 • 908.273.9121 www.artcenternj.org • info@artcenternj.org Gallery Hours Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday & Friday: 10 am – 5 pm; Thursday: 10 am – 8 pm; Saturday & Sunday: 11 am – 4 pm This exhibition made possible in part by a grant from

Major support for the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey is provided in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, The Horizon Foundation of New Jersey, the WJS Foundation, Audrey & Zygi Wilf and the Wilf Family Foundation, and Art Center members and donors.

STAFF Tracy L. Adler, Director Susanna White, Associate Director and Curator Megan Austin, Public Programming and Outreach Coordinator Eléonore Moncheur de Rieudotte, Collections and Exhibitions Specialist

Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art

Hamilton College, 198 College Hill Road, Clinton, NY 13323 • 315.859.4396 www.hamilton.edu/wellin • wellin@hamilton.edu Museum Hours Monday: Closed; Tuesday – Sunday: 11 am – 5 pm The Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art’s programs are made possible, in part, with funds from The John B. Root ’44 Exhibition Fund; The Dietrich Foundation; The Edward W. and Grace C. Root Endowment Fund; The William G. Roehrick ’34 Lecture Fund; and private contributions.

Cover Motif by Frohawk Two Feathers Photography Credits Plates 9, 14, 15, 17 – 20, 25: Kristin Maizenaski Plate 22, 24: James Pakola Plate 26: Peterjorsky / Gipe Plates 1 – 8, 10 – 12, 16, 21, 23: Matt Grayson Design by Kristin Maizenaski Printed by Luminar Solutions © 2013, Visual Arts Center of New Jersey ISBN: 978-0-925915-44-3