Blood of the Sun

I was invited to participate in an exhibition opening up in two weeks titled, "Blood of the Sun: Artists Respond to the the Poetry of Suzan Shown Harjo." The show opens at Ahalenia Studios in Santa Fe.

The two pieces shown here are in response to the poem "Enemy Art," by Harjo. The poem looks at the dilemma of a person being asked for help by a member of an opposing tribe. These pieces are an exploration of the cultural differences I have felt while being so far from home. I am an Alaska Native and at a primarily Lower-48 American Indian school and am a minority within a minority academic environment.

I am responding to a simple sounding yet deeply complex issue of identity. For graduation it is customary for students of my college to gather and display a flag from their tribe. When I searched for an Aleut or an Inupiaq flag, I came up empty handed. There might be one for each group. If there is, it is not something known about or something many identify with.

To explore this, I set out to make my own flag. I wanted to incorporate the misconceptions and prejudgements that I have experienced being from Alaska and Alaska Native into these works. The pieces are titled, "Stranger Where I Am, Stranger Where I'm From #1 and #2." The red bordered piece is #1 and the mostly blue piece is #2. The source image for both of these pieces is an Alaska flag. The pieces are printed as archival pigment prints. Both incorporate pastel drawings, which have been digitally combined with a base photograph.

If you are in Santa Fe, come by Ahalenia Studios on Second Street in Santa Fe on May 13 to check out the show.