Abstracts / Resúmenes / Resumos / Résumés


S.11 - Nov 11 2021
18:00 – 19:30 Hrs.

Indigenous-controlled public art: Indigenous Installations

Dr. Natchee Blu Barnd
(Oregon State University, USA)

Indigenous-controlled public art can play a meaningful role in the reclamation of geographies. Presenting images of several Columbia River Art public installation projects, I argue that such pieces have a unique, although constrained, ability to move from being objects just used as symbols of multicultural incorporation toward insurgent acts sustaining and creating spatial reorganization. What kind of geographical work can be done by a cedar bunkrail in a public plaza or a riverside iron/wood sculpture? These questions of spatial significance and capacity are especially well tested in urban areas, where Indigenous presence is often most thoroughly “removed” or forgotten. What happens when Native homelands are reasserted within the city? Is art the most effective means of making such assertions? This presentation will describe ongoing collaborative research, commissioned by a Native nation, with the explicit aim of actively reshaping the landscape of Portland, Oregon and beyond. Drawing from interviews with artists and tribal officials, I will outline the unique spatial project being deployed by this Indigenous nation as it moves toward a more intentional and expansive assertion of Indigenous lands and space.