Origins
A young Canadian artist was about to have an exhibition of her paintings at a gallery in Toronto.
Visions Gallery had planned to showcase the work of Amanda PL, 29, a local non-Indigenous artist who says she was inspired by the Woodlands style made famous by the Anishinabe artist Norval Morrisseau beginning in the ’60s, with a focus on nature, animals and Indigenous spirituality.
But within hours of the gallery’s email announcement promoting the exhibit, there was a backlash, with people alleging that PL had appropriated Indigenous culture and art.
So the gallery canceled the exhibit.
Chippewa artist Jay Soule was among those leading the charge. He argues PL blatantly copied Morrisseau with virtually no regard for the storytelling behind his work.
“What she’s doing is essentially cultural genocide, because she’s taking his stories and retelling them, which bastardizes it down the road. Other people will see her work and they’ll lose the connection between the real stories that are attached to it,” said Soule.
No doubt some will, but that happens with everything. People see what they see, read what they read, listen to what they listen to. All art has sources and influences. If you try to shut down art that has influences, there will be no art left, except what people create for their own enjoyment. Since Amanda PL is explicit about what inspired her, the chances are good that she would have motivated new people to find the work of Norval Morrisseau.
PL said she first became inspired by the Woodlands style when she was living in Thunder Bay, Ont., studying to become a visual arts teacher and taking Native studies.
“I just tried to learn all I could about the Aboriginal culture, their teachings, their stories, and I’ve tried to capture the beauty of the art style and make it my own by drawing upon elements of nature within Canada that have meaning to me,” she told CBC Toronto in an interview Friday.
Which is what artists and other culture purveyors do. It’s an inherent and crucial part of cultural conversation, and it’s a good thing, not a bad one. If Amanda PL were pretending she’d invented the style that would be appropriation, but she isn’t.
Visions Gallery co-owner Tony Magee acknowledged PL didn’t misrepresent herself to him or his partner, artist Francisco Castro Lostalo, in their conversations ahead of the planned exhibit.
Magee said it never came up, and he didn’t think to ask whether she was Indigenous. “In retrospect, I wish that I had,” he said in a phone interview Friday.
It was only after the exhibit was announced on Monday that he learned PL was not Indigenous.
Ok what are the rules here? If PL is not allowed to incorporate indigenous styles in her painting, does that mean that Indigenous painters are not allowed to incorporate European styles in theirs?
If artists aren’t allowed to incorporate styles of artists of the Wrong Race, that means they should avoid looking at art by people of the Wrong Race, doesn’t it? Maybe that means they should be forcibly prevented from looking at it, just to be safe? No Rembrandt or Vermeer or Velasquez for you First Nations peeps; no Frida Kahlo for you gringos; NO MIXING for anyone.
You can see some of her work here.
The Lake
I wonder if these artistic Luddites are aware that cultural recombination lies at the heart of so fucking much of modern art of any type. Oh well, I guess the largely black blues should never have messed about with european musical traditions to create jazz, so just cancel it and every successor musical style, cancel everything that came about via cultural fusion.
Holms, exactly. People occasionally make comments about Elvis or the Rolling Stones or whoever “stealing” black music, but I rarely hear anyone say their music should be outright boycotted for that reason.
I’m not sure there’s anything worthwhile in the concept of “cultural misappropriation.” Of course it’s possible to reference minorities or their culture in a way that is disrespectful, and doing so deserves criticism, but the notion that it is per se improper, whether it’s done respectfully or not, based on the identity of the person doing it, seems like nonsense.
And does it matter that aboriginal people (being people) borrowed from and were influenced by other aboriginal people and cultures? Were there no power imbalances, no violence, no dominance before Europeans came along? Are we meant to believe that North America was all sunshine and handholding before then, everyone basking in equality? (It wasn’t.)
Oh and that cultural genocide comment, holy shit the lack of perspective. The stolen generation was cultural genocide; an appreciative artist that openly talks about the culture her work references is not.
If there is a large part of the dominant population who will appreciate an ethically distinctive style of art only when it’s performed or presented by a member of the dominant ethnicity (depreciated when performed or presented by its ethnographic heirs), it becomes difficult to think there is not an oppressive and thieving dynamic at work when, lo and behold, an artist of the dominant ethnicity is suddenly acclaimed for their work in that style.
To listen to the people in my Environmental Ethics class, one would believe this was absolutely the case. They firmly believed in the noble savage, and that everyone lived in harmony with nature and with each other until Western Europeans intruded into their lives. Africa, South America, and the Orient would also be included in those sunshine and hand holding places.
The spot where I sat during that class probably still has a dent in it the shape of my head from all the head-desk moments (maybe the worst was the guy that insisted geese felt shame after they had sex!?!)
The racism of the racism haters! The native peoples were all blissful children, basically, untouched by aggression, greed, anger, or ignorance. Or no. Not children. They were nonhuman, I guess?
John Roy Carlson’s classic book on American pro-Nazis in the ramp up to Pearl Harbor; ‘Under Cover.’ Has flyleaves made up of a collage of Far Right membership group cards and letterhead samples.
Carlson appreciated the crazy irony that some of the most vicious racist groups routinely used ‘noble Red Man’ iconography as part of their Tory-anarchist shtick. The New World as golden Arcadia is a grotesque, racist, fantasy.
Artistic apartheid, in the name of some bogus authenticity, is utterly racist. That leftists can’t even begin to see it is one more nail in the coffin of the progressive project. Blood And Soil statements worthy of Mein Kampf are swallowed without complaint by the very people who ought to know better.
These days when I hear the word “indigenous” I reach for my… (supply your own variation). (/s)
Or, as I commented in an earlier thread, “indigenous” is a word Humpty Dumpty would be proud of.
And, btw, I have a small Norval Morrisseau piece that I bought at a garage sale a dozen years ago. I got it for a pittance and, at first, was very proud of my acumen. Then, thinking perhaps the seller, on old (aboriginal?) man, didn’t know what he owned, I tried to track him down. But he had moved and no one knew where. So I made a contribution in his name – or something approximating it – to the local hall of the Royal Canadian Legion, an organization of veterans where I knew he used to go.
Do these ethnic purists not see a problem with language? Writing? Pork? Popcorn? Ice cream? Cheezeburgers, hot dogs, Coca-fucking-Cola? Bloody basic arithmetic?
Lets not forget ‘we’ appropriated modern arithmetic and much of our foundation sciences from the Arabs. Personally, I’m not convinced at all that it is possible to appropriate knowledge. Behaviour yes, knowledge is fundamental though.
Right. There may be some opacity regarding the origin of zero* though, some claim the idea came out of India. But that’s nothing here.
* N0t to be confused with Origo nor the root of zero. **
** Pronunced ‘nought’.
No holms and skreetchy monkey but if someone released a song called Jumpin Mack Flash(instead of jumpin jack flash) or Dont be a fool(instead of dont be cruel) there would be a backlash because that is what this artist is doing taking the works of aboriginal peoples and passing it off as her own. If she had her own style that incorperated first nations influences then that would be fine but her art is clearly stolen from the native cultures with none of her own idea’s
Which is why there aren’t endless pop songs based on variations of Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D Major’.
Oh, wait…