HARRISON BERRY
ARTS & CULTURE
CULTURE NEWS
IN SEARCH OF HISTORIC BASQUE WHALERS
Basque artist Judas Arrieta views Western culture through an international lens, providing an alternate vision of seemingly familiar themes.
CRITIQUE OR CONTROVERSY?
An international artist is challenging national identity in time for Jaialdi. HARRISON BERRY “One of the things that caught me off guard Once every five years, Boise rolls out the welcome mat for tens of thousands of visitors to have been the Native American caricatures,” he said. the massive Basque festival, Jaialdi, which this Specifically, it was a painting containing the year kicked off on Tuesday, July 28 and will run mascot of the Cleveland Indians baseball team, through Sunday, Aug. 2. It’s almost a full week of Basque music, food, dancing, sports and oth- Chief Wahoo, that caught Morales’ attention. Native American mascots have received er activities. Along with the Twilight Criterium, considerable scrutiny in recent years as civil rights Treefort Music Fest and the Idaho Shakespeare and Native American groups press sports teams to Festival, it’s one of the biggest feathers in the drop the depictions, which many say are offensive City of Trees’ cultural cap. As Boise connects with its Basque roots, Judas and stereotypical. Among the teams that have faced pushback over their mascots are the CleveArrieta is bringing cultural cosmopolitanism to land Indians and Washington Redskins, but there Ming Studios. The artist, who hails from Spain’s are scores of Native AmericanBasque Country, has lovingly themed university, college and filled his paintings with images BOISELAND high-school mascots—among lifted from Americans’ visual Through Saturday, Aug. 22; 11 them, in Idaho, the Boise High vocabulary and filtered them a.m.-6 p.m., Tuesdays-Fridays; 10 a.m.-4 p.m. Saturdays; FREE. Braves. through the mind of a world Ming Studios, 420 S. Sixth St., Arrieta’s caricatures could be traveler. Boise, 208-972-9028, mingstuseen as offensive, provocative “I feel like a DJ when I dios.org. or, as Morales put it, “a mirror paint,” Arrieta said. “I take eleto American pop culture”; but ments that don’t belong to me.” Arrieta has shown his work across Europe and Morales felt that the images could be construed in Asia, but this is his first visit to the United States, a negative light. After conferring with Arrieta, he which he called “the Far West.” His impressions of wrote an email to tribal leaders to tell them about Arrieta’s work containing depictions of Native America come primarily from cinema and comic Americans. books. His paintings, part of the Ming Studios “I did not want the work to be isolated or misexhibition Boiseland, are chaotic compositions of understood. It’s a personal responsibility,” Morales caricatures of beret-wearing Basques, cowboys, Native Americans and taglines written in carefully said. “We don’t censor artists. The idea was to be proactive rather than reactive.” imitated fonts. Some of those images startled Arrieta said he views his work in a different Ming Studios founder and Executive Director light entirely, saying that the images of Native Jason Morales, who worried that some viewers Americans are not the only caricatures in his work could find them offensive. BOISE WEEKLY.COM
and that he draws his imagery from the wells of popular culture and his own curiosity, not prejudice or bigotry. “I just want to go [to the United States] like a small child and see what’s going on,” he said. Caricatures are part of a cultural critique implicit in Arrieta’s Boiseland. Boise’s Jaialdi celebration—and much of its promotional material— relies on romanticized images of Basque people, including Basques wearing traditional berets and red, white and green clothing. Representations of Basque people in Arrieta’s paintings share those visual cues, but by juxtaposing them with caricatures from other cultures, Arrieta said he is making a statement about national identity. “All the people I meet here are Basques, but they’re American, too. I’m creating a window to another world,” he said. “I talk about selling the culture. What does it mean to be Basque?” Arrieta’s work has proved popular with its Boise audience, with dozens of people turning out for the July 24 opening of the Boiseland exhibition. The evening was a success even beyond attendance: Arrieta sold nine paintings at the reception, where he mingled with gallery regulars and visitors who had come to celebrate Jaialdi, and discussed his work and love of American Western movies. According to Arrieta, reinvisioning seemingly familiar American cultural images through an international lens is part of what makes his art accessible. “I’m first a universal artist—then I’m Basque,” he said.
Fewer than 50 years after Christopher Columbus made his landings in the Caribbean and at around the same time Ferdinand Magellan embarked on his circumnavigation of the globe, Basque whalers were plying the waters around Newfoundland and Labrador. As early as the 1520s, sailors from the Basque region of the Pyrenees arrived in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, chasing cod across the Atlantic Ocean. By the 1530s, the fishermen had expanded their hunt to include whales and, by the 1540s, had begun to establish a vibrant network of whaling stations at ports along the jagged coastline. Meanwhile, nearly 2,000 miles to the south, it would be 50 years before settlers founded the colony of Jamestown, Va. The history of the first Basque presence in North America is mostly lost amid flashier expeditions such as those of Jacques Cartier, who claimed the land that would become Canada for the French, and Samuel de Champlain, who established New France and the city of Quebec. In honor of Jaialdi 2015, New York-based 5A Incentive Planners is showcasing the late-medieval Basque whaling 10 a.m.-noon. FREE. The Grove Hotel, 245 S. Capitol industry with the Blvd., Boise, 208-333presentation “In 8000. basquewhalers.info the Footsteps of Basque Whalers in Newfoundland and Labrador,” on Thursday, July 30 at the Grove Hotel. “It’s a story that very few people know,” said 5A owner Ignazio Arizmendi, who added that the event is meant to drum up interest for a cruise around the old Basque whaling areas. “We charter a boat and we’re going to sail for a week all around Newfoundland,” he said. Centered on sites including St. John’s, Fogo Island and Red Bay—the latter which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site—“In the Footsteps of Basque Whalers” explores the “bold navigators of yesteryear,” who ventured from the shore in specialized skiffs to harpoon right and gray whales—hauling them back to port for processing into meat and oil for export. The trade, considered by historians to be the first commercial European whaling enterprise, made the Basque home cities among the most prosperous in Europe and set the template for future whaling practices—including the Basque ship design, which remained largely unchanged for 200 years. It was in Red Bay, Arizmendi said, that a sunken galleon was found, establishing the area as a historic site. “In Boise we’re going to do a presentation because we expect a lot of Basque people from all over the world will be there,” he said. —Zach Hagadone BOISEweekly | JULY 29 – AUGUST 4, 2015 | 21