Native Labs

New work from my Semiotic Warfare series is currently being featured in the Images Forward exhibition at the Berlin Gallery.

Feedback Loop, Fourth Verse, 2010
Mixed media (video, automobile paint and acrylic mirror text in Cherokee syllabary on wood panels), “24” x 12”, 22.5” x 12”, 8″ video monitor. Video duration 4:05.

Cul-de-sac, 2010
Mixed media (video, automobile paint and acrylic mirror text in Cherokee syllabary on wood panels), 27” x 12“, 19.5” x 12”, 8″ video monitor. Video duration 4:07.

Airspace, Land and Other Purposes, 2010
Mixed media (video, automobile paint and acrylic mirror text in Cherokee syllabary on wood panels), 23.5” x 12”, 20″ x 12”, 8″ video monitor. Video duration 4:39.

Part of an ongoing series of mixed media work titled Semiotic Warfare, which utilizes phrases written in Cherokee syllabary, and a variety of media to examine postcolonial signifiers that define contemporary geographies, economic markets, political bodies and intercultural intercourse throughout North America. In this work the Cherokee syllabary becomes a coded medium to engage the viewer and the broader contexts of a particularized regional geography. These specific works provide glimpses into the imagination of a contested landscape that is being forcibly defined by the will of the market. In their investigation of life on the dirt, they dialogue with Postcommodity’s ongoing work addressing 21st Century colonizer strategies within the militarized zone of the Tohono O’odham.

If you are in the Phoenix area please check out the Images Forward exhibition at the Berlin Gallery on view April 16 through May 19. My video Judeo-Christian Western Scientific Worldview and three new works from my Semiotic Warfare series will be featured in the exhibition. Be sure to stop by during the opening (6-8PM), which is being held in conjunction with the Heard Museum’s Native+You 3rd Friday event.

If you are in the Phoenix area February 19, please stop by the Berlin Gallery at the Heard Museum and check out my poetry reading. I’ll be reading from my book length poem Marginal Equity at 6PM. And if possible, show up early for the cash bar. It will make my job a whole lot easier.

If you are in the NYC area, please stop by the Chelsea Museum and check out the exhibition (and my video installation Judeo Christian Western Scientific Worldview).

Winter 2010 | Volume XXXII | Number 1, Edited by Simon Ortiz

Go to your local book store and check out the excerpts from my long poem Marginal Equity that have been published in the Winter 2010 volume of the Kenyon Review.