Installation (Installation)

The neon sign Walk the Walk (Sam Durant) overlays a Walk/Don’t Walk Sign crosswalk sign onto the text “You Are On Indian Land Show Some Respect.” The sign asks viewers to not walk on Indigenous lands without respecting it, and, switching between a walking person icon in white and a raised hand icon in red, redirects their actions. This work by Native Art Department International signals a reminder that we–the audience and institution–are located on and occupy traditional territories. The work appropriates and twists white artist Sam Durant’s You Are On Indian Land Show Some Respect (2008) in response to his work Scaffold (2012) installed in 2016-7 at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.

Photography (Photography)

In Jackass (2008) by Ari Marcopoulos, his two sons, Cairo and Ethan, are pictured relaxing in a disheveled bedroom in their Sonoma home. One plays with some sort of board game while the other holds either a book or DVD of the movie Jackass Number Two, presumably the source of the photograph’s title. As Marcopoulos has continued to document his sons, and as they have become teenagers, the images of them begin to closely resemble the teenagers in much of his earlier work.

Photography (Photography)

A photograph of a tin box full of marijuana simply titled Green Box, speaks to the constantly changing status of the substance–once taboo or illicit, now a symbol of a growing industry in Northern California. In the past a photograph of marijuana would more likely be found in an evidence file than an art museum or gallery, but today continued debates about the legality of marijuana and the industry surrounding it has brought the substance into common public view. Green Box is a strong example of the current sociopolitical state of California and the grey areas that exist in legislature and at the same time illustrates the unavoidable commercialization of once underground cultures.