The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

Antonio Chavarria, Curator of Ethnology at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture (which is located on Museum Hill, Camino Lejo, off Old Santa Fe Trail in New Mexico) kindly brings our attention to an unusual and fascinating-sounding new exhibition opening later this month, Comic Art Indigène. From the official description:

“Storytelling has long been a part of Native American culture. Comic Art Indigène which opens at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture on May 11, 2008 looks at how storytelling has been used through comics and comic inspired art to express the contemporary Native American experience. Under the larger definition of narrative art, comic art is more related to Native American art traditions than one might expect. The earliest surviving examples of such narrative art is rock art. The historic examples used in the exhibition, such as photographs of rock art, ledger art, and ceramics are meant to link Native American art traditions with contemporary voices…

[the exhibition] examines how American Indian artists articulate identity, reclaim stereotypes, worldview, politics, and culture through the kinetic expression of sequential art. Inspired by this unique medium, using its icons, tropes and dynamism, this is a new world of American Indian art, full of the brash excitement first seen on newsprint a century ago, sometimes unrefined, even crude at times, but never sterile.”

(a familiar looking comics heroine, here executed in the form of a bead bracelet by Marcus Amerman, borrowed from the exhibition site)

I think this does sound quite intriguing – certainly plenty of commentators (including me, guilty as charged) have drawn parallels between the comics medium and earlier forms of narrative art, such as the works of William Hogarth in the 18th century or the narrative friezes (almost like comic strips in stone) from the Parthenon to rock paintings by Aboriginal people in Australia, the astonishing cave paintings of Lascaux in France or, as here, Native American traditional art forms. As with language it seems the human desire to create and share stories – orally, written, visually – is a universal constant across millennia and across cultures. Which isn’t, I think, such a surprise to those of us who love the Ninth Art because we already know how the comics medium has an amazing ability to appeal to all sorts of different readers across the globe. Comic Art Indigène opens on Sunday 11th of May and will run until January 4th of next year. For more details check the official exhibition website or the museum’s main page.