A distinctly Indigenous form of landscape representation is emerging
among contemporary Indigenous artists from North America. For centuries,
landscape painting in European art typically used representational
strategies such as single-point perspective to lure viewers--and
settlers--into the territories of the old and new worlds. In the
twentieth century, abstract expressionism transformed painting to
encompass something beyond the visual world, and, later, minimalism and
the Land Art movement broadened the genre of landscape art to include
sculptural forms and site-specific installations.
In Shifting Grounds, art historian Kate Morris argues that Indigenous
artists are expanding and reconceptualizing the forms of the genre,
expressing Indigenous attitudes toward land and belonging even as they
draw upon mainstream art practices. The resulting works evoke all five
senses: from the overt sensuality of Kay WalkingStick's tactile
paintings to the eerie soundscapes of Alan Michelson's videos to the
immersive environments of Kent Monkman's dioramas, this art resonates
with a fully embodied and embedded subjectivity. Shifting Grounds
explores themes of presence and absence, survival and vulnerability,
memory and commemoration, and power and resistance, illuminating the
artists' engagement not only with land and landscape but also with the
history of representation itself.
