Off the Wall
SHINING A LIGHT ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLE
COURTESY THE ARTIST AND GARTH GREENAN GALLERY, NEW YORK
An enrolled member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, Jaune Quickto-See Smith is an acclaimed Indigenous American painter, printmaker, and self-described cultural arts worker who takes a decidedly interdisciplinary approach to her artistic practice. Armed with a deep knowledge of the European-American art historical tradition, Quick-to-See Smith adroitly appropriates modernist aesthetics in order to shine a critical light on the erasure and oppression of Indigenous peoples in North America from first contact to the present day. Drive-Thru, 2002 (at right) is the first work by a living Indigenous American artist to enter the collection of the Addison Gallery of American Art. In this piece, the artist references Robert Rauschenberg’s proto-Pop paintings through her synthesis of recognizable symbols of American culture overlaid with animated, expressionistic brushwork. An Indigenous man with a feather in his hair—a stereotypical visual trope common in mid-century American advertising—is surrounded by the banal signs (both literal and figurative) of shallow American consumerism in this evocative painting. The bold, primary colors of the Sonic drive-thru logo and inky black and turquoise hues of an incorrectly translated “HECHO EN USA” label bleed down the front of the canvas to contrast with and obscure the two-dimensional, uncolored outline of the Indigenous figure, bringing the viewer’s attention to the continued exploitation and aestheticization of Indigenous culture in America. A yellow and blue price tag that one might find on a windshield in a used car lot barely disguises the number “1492,” a solemn reminder of the centuries of violence and genocide ushered in by European colonization.
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (born 1940, Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes) Drive-Thru, 2002 Acrylic on canvas Addison Gallery of American Art, Phillips Academy, Andover, MA, museum purchase, 2020.69
—GORDON DEARBORN WILKINS
Robert M. Walker Associate Curator of American Art
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