Against Amnesia

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie

Curated by Rhonda Meier

Opening on Friday, September 9 at 7 p.m.
The exhibition runs from September 8 to October 8, 2005
The gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m.

In the context of Le Mois de la photo à Montréal, Dazibao presents Against Amnesia, an exhibition of recent work by California-based artist of Seminole/Muskogee/Diné descent, Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie. For over three decades, Tsinhnahjinnie has employed photography, and now video, as a means to address Native audiences and as a tool in the fight against racism, sexism, and colonialism in their complex affiliation with oppression. Specifically, she investigates notions of cultural identity, stereotypes, and issues of hybridity by highlighting how indigenous references and symbols are conveyed and interpreted publicly.

The exhibition is comprised of the series Portraits Against Amnesia (2003), ten vintage studio portrait postcards that have been digitally collaged and then enlarged to emphasize the sitter's agency and cultural dynamism. Apart from a few photographs that come from Tsinhnahjinnie's family archives, most of the original portraits were purchased over the internet. The market for the acquisition of photographs of Indigenous people worldwide is voraciously active, yet Tsinhnahjinnie has found that she is able to outbid dealers and collectors when the subjects are not clothed in ceremonial regalia or "traditional" dress -beads, feathers, buckskin- but in European garments. Commissioned by the sitters themselves, these images record a distinguished authority in the subjects' gaze which proudly reflects the control that these individuals had over their own representation. Tsinhnahjinnie celebrates these subtleties by incorporating the portraits in her own collages in order to ensure that a strong indigenous vitality has a place in the future.

In the video projection An Aboriginal World View with Aboriginal Dreams (2002) Tsinhnahjinnie, in collaboration with performance artist Leilani Chan, captures the compelling image of a woman walking through a Navajo reservation, bound in a hijab fabricated out of American flags. Due to the heightened political tensions regarding terrorism, the images reveal alarming parallels between the United States' position as a foreign occupying force and the domestic colonization of Native American land.

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie aims not only to reclaim historical indigenous images in an act to resist amnesia, but proceeds to re-establish them in her own contemporary native expression, in a practice that she herself identifies as “photographic sovereignty.”

Against Amnesia is being presented in the context of the 9th Edition of Le Mois de la Photo à Montréal. Martha Langford, the Artistic Director of this year's festival, has chosen to explore the theme Image and Imagination.

Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1954. She studied at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico and the California College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, receiving a B.F.A. in 1981 in painting with a minor in photography. In 2002, she completed her M.F.A. at the University of California, Irvine, focusing her studio work on digital videography. Her work has been exhibited extensively across the United States as well as in New Zealand, Slovenia, Istanbul, and London. She has received numerous awards including a Chancellors Fellowship from the University of California, Irvine; an Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art; the First Peoples Community Artist Award and a Rockefeller Foundation Humanities Fellowship. Tsinhnahjinnie is currently the Director of the C.N. Gorman Museum at the University of California, Davis, and Assistant Professor in the Department of Native American Studies.

Rhonda Meier is an independent curator, writer, and editor as well as an educator at the Musée d'art contemporain de Montréal. She obtained her M.A. in Art History from Concordia University in 1999, focusing on contemporary First Nations art production.

Dazibao thanks the artist and curator for their generous contribution and its members for their support. Dazibao receives financial support from the Canada Council for the Arts, the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec, and the Conseil des arts de Montréal. Dazibao is a member of the Regroupement des centres d'artistes autogérés du Québec.