silentstar, delicacy

2020 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

142.24 x 50.8 x 12.7 cm

Duane Linklater

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silentstar, delicacy by Duane Linklater is a replica of a baby pink hoodie that the artist wore as a teenager, embellished with hand-painted elements and band patches. From associations with punk and hip-hop to skater culture, the hoodie has a history of being adopted by youth-driven communities once relegated to the fringes, and being embraced by mainstream fashion as a practical article of clothing, which Linklater’s work complicates even further. The reproduction is made with dye extracted from cochineal insects. Cochineal is a product of Indigenous technology developed for the Aztec and Maya long before the arrival of the Spanish. Europeans coveted the deep, rich carmine that was brighter and more durable than any other red dye, and began exploitation of the resource. By the 17th century, cochineal had become one of the world’s first globalized products. Linklater’s work speaks to histories of colonialism and cultural appropriation of Indigenous knowledge and representations in consumer culture, especially in the fashion industry that explicitly appropriates Indigenous traditions and imagery in its design. Linklater’s hoodie also includes one silk-screened image in blue on the front, a common design and often-customizable feature in the fashion industry. The image is a distorted film still from The Daughter of Dawn , a 1920s silent film shot in Oklahoma with an all-Indigenous cast of more than three hundred Kiowa and Comanche actors. Despite its contrived storyline centering on a love triangle involving the Kiowa chief’s daughter, Linklater sees the film as an extraordinary document on Indigenous communities and Indigenous land rights.

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Duane Linklater addresses issues of cultural loss and recovery, as well as appropriation and authorship articulated through sculpture, installation, photography, film, and video. Linklater challenges the physical and ideological structures of settler-colonialism and reconsiders oral traditions of knowledge sharing in communities where the transmission of cultural wisdom and histories is critical for future generations. In 2011, Linklater initiated Wood Land School, a nomadic, artist-driven project that situates Indigenous forms and ideas within the institutional spaces that each session inhabits. During residencies at the Banff Centre in the following year, Linklater and sculptor Brian Jungen created the acclaimed film Modest Livelihood . Part of DOCUMENTA (13) , it follows the artists on a hunting trip, referencing their desires to reclaim ancestral knowledge. Linklater’s research on the language and traditional territory of Newfoundland’s extinct Beothuck people forms another project in this vein, while his performances and frequent collaborations with other artists and educators aim to create conditions and spaces for Indigenous voices and ideas within historic sites of marginalization, such as the museum, the gallery, and the biennial.

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Colors:

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• colonialism.n.01
• appropriation.n.03
• subculture.n.01
• fashion.n.04
• consumerism.n.02
• exploitation.n.02