Self-Images of North American Aboriginals
 
James Luna 
Take a Picture with an Indian (1991)
 The words on the body on the right:  e.g. 
Jimmie Durham
Self-Portrait (1986)
Mixed media
  (Cahan  42)  
  • "Hello! I'm Jimmie . .. . As an Artist, I am confused about many things. . .";
  • "Useless nipples"; 
  • under the opening, "I  am basically light-hearted"; 
  • Indian penises are unusually large and colorful."

    •  
    Self Portrait, a flayed, full body nude, a red "skin," a hide or hiding -- is a bitter and witty icon displayed o n the wall.  As though illustrating  the dilemma of the 'invented Indians," the self-portrait is all surface.  Durham, who has proudly called himself a "double Red," has branded a red star on his forehead, imprinted his chest and thighs with fish and his ankle with fern.  He has  sea shells for ears, bits of animal hide hair; one turquoise eye is just to show a little "Indianness," and the feathers revealed by an open chest cavity imply a certain "light-heartedness."  "I have 12 hobbies!    11 house plants!  People like my poems," are among the "captions" mapping such landmarks as an appendix scar, and defiantly "large and colorful" genitals.  (Cahan 64)
    Lawrence Paul Yuxweltuptun
    Red Man Watching Whilte Man Trying to Fix Hole in Sky.(1990)
     
    Jean LaMarr  They're Going to Dump It Where?!? (1984)
    The image exemplifies the Indian resistance to the nuclear dumping on the sacred places on Indian land.  The reflection in her glasses shows Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant.  (Cahan  76)  
     
    Hudson Lagusu  demonstrates use of the sacrificial altar
    "The man depicted is not a pure heathen victim seen by an unseen camera, but evidently a modern Lelanesian dressed in shorts,  whose amusement is manifest -- as is perforce the fact of reenactment.    He is . . . a man who is named and marked as an Alican priest, in the photography's caption; and as it happens Father Lagusu is also the author of an article describing the sacrifice he was playfully performing, not a voiceless subaltern" (Thomas 63).  

    Cahan, Susan and Zoya Kocur eds.  Contemporary Art and Multimedia Education.  NY: Routledge, 1996.
     
      to Postmodernism, Literary Criticism, IACD
    Postmodernism Course, '98