James Luna The Artifact Piece

James Luna
James Luna in 2011
Built-in	(1950-02-09)February 9, 1950 Orange, California, United states
Died	March four, 2018(2018-03-04) (aged 68) New Orleans, Louisiana
Nationality	La Jolla Luiseño, American
Education	BFA Academy of California, MS San Diego State Academy, Honorary PhD Found of American Indian Arts
Known for	Performance, installation
Notable piece of work	The Antiquity Slice (1987/1990), Take A Picture With A Existent Indian (1993), Emendatio (2005)
Movement	Indigenous performance art
Awards	Eiteljorg Fellowship (2007), Guggenheim Fellowship (2017)

James Luna (February 9, 1950 – March 4, 2018^[1]) was a Payómkawichum, Ipi, and Mexican-American performance artist, lensman and multimedia installation artist. His work is all-time known for challenging the ways in which conventional museum exhibitions describe Native Americans.^[ii] With recurring themes of multiculturalism, alcoholism, and colonialism, his work was often comedic and theatrical in nature.^[three] In 2017 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship.^[four]

Background [edit]

Luna was born in 1950 in Orangish, California.^[5] He moved to the La Jolla Indian Reservation in California in 1975. In 1976, he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts caste at the University of California, Irvine, and in 1983, he earned a Master of Science degree in counseling at San Diego State Academy.^[vi] In 2011, he received an honorary doctoral degree from the Institute of American Indian Arts.

Luna was an agile community member of the La Jolla Indian reservation. He served as the director of the tribe's didactics heart in 1987, and the community was often a focal point of his photography and writing.^[seven] He taught art at the University of California, San Diego and spent 25 years every bit a full-time academic counselor at Palomar College in San Marcos, California.^[8]

Artwork [edit]

A self-proclaimed "American Indian Ceremonial Clown", "Culture Warrior," and "Tribal Denizen",^[7] Luna's artwork was known for challenging racial categories and exposing outmoded, Eurocentric means in which museums have displayed Native American Indians as parts of natural history, rather than every bit living members of contemporary guild.^[2]

While Luna began his art career equally a painter, he soon branched out into performance and installation art, which he did for over three decades.^{[half dozen]} He used objects, references to American popular culture, and his ain trunk in his work.^[three] He performed over 58 solo exhibitions starting in 1981 and partook in group exhibitions and projects across the United states of america and the world.^[9] His artistry was oft referred to as both disruptive^[10] and radical for its stark confrontations with colonialism, violence, sexuality, and identity.^[xi] Some of his best known pieces are:

The Artifact Piece (1987/1990) [edit]

In The Antiquity Piece (1987) at the San Diego Museum of Man, Luna lay naked except for a loincloth and all the same in a display case filled with sand and artifacts, such as Luna'south favorite music and books, too as legal papers and labels describing his scars.^[3] The work looked similar a museum exhibit and was set in a hall dedicated to traditional ethnographic displays. The marks and scars on his body were caused while drinking, fighting, or in accidents. Critics praised Luna's ability to challenge conventional understandings and displays of the Native American identities and presumptions almost his own personhood by putting his own body on display.^[12] He performed "The Antiquity Piece" in 1990 at The Decade Evidence in New York City.^[12]

Accept a Moving-picture show With a Real Indian (1991–93) [edit]

In the early 1990s, Luna stood outside of Washington DC'south Union Station and performed Take a Picture With a Existent Indian. Luna describes the performance past saying:

Standing at a podium wearing an outfit, I announce: "Have a picture with a existent Indian. Take a picture here, in Washington, D.C. on this beautiful Monday morn, on this holiday called Columbus Day. America loves to say 'her Indians.' America loves to run into u.s.a. dance for them. America likes our arts and crafts. America likes to name cars and trucks after our tribes. Take a moving-picture show with a existent Indian. Have a picture here today, on this sunny twenty-four hours here in Washington, D.C." And so I just stand there. Eventually, one person will pose with me. After that they just start lining up. I'll practise that for a while until I get mad plenty or humiliated plenty.^[xiii]

In utilizing and engaging a public audience, Luna taps into common cultural commodification of Native American culture. Such a trend manifests in the idea of the "McIndian"; the idea that Native culture is something that tin can be massed produced, consumed, and enjoyed without acknowledging the deep history of oppression Native Americans have endured.^[3]

In My Dreams: A Surreal, Post-Indian, Subterranean Blues Feel (1996) [edit]

In this performance, Luna is acclaimed for having challenged the trope that Native Americans are "peoples of retentivity" in means that white culture may envy as being more purely spiritual.^[x] In ane scene, he performs a "traditional" dance with crutches to reveal how white demand for Native operation is both limiting and inauthentic. In some other, he puts his diabetes on display, giving himself insulin on phase which is said past critics to be emblematic of the binary of the "wild" merely "controlled" Native American.^[three]

His final scene in this performance is a tribute to Dean Martin, which serves to reverse white tributes to Native peoples dorsum on to his white audiences. By having a Native American Indian idolize a white person in a way that is relatively fanatic, Luna revealed the problematic manner in which white people tin can idolize Native American figures.^{[ citation needed ]}

Emendatio (2005) [edit]

In 2005 the National Museum of the American Indian sponsored him to participate in the Venice Biennale.^[six] The piece he created, Emendatio, included three installations, Spinning Adult female, Apparitions: Past and Present, and The Chapel for Pablo Tac, besides a personal functioning in Venice, Renewal defended to Pablo Tac (1822–1841), a Luiseño Indian author and scholar, who went to study in Rome, where he died.^[three]

Utilizing cultural aspects of both the Lusieno people and his ain family, Luna's installations and performance expose the affects that the poor translation of Native identities as well equally globalization has had in oppressing narratives of Native American memory while inspiring both "white green-eyed" and "liberal guilt".^[3]

Honors and awards [edit]

Throughout his career, Luna received many awards. Including:

1988: LACE Fellowship (Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, California)
1998: C.O.Thousand.B.O Grant for Literary Studies (San Diego, California)
1991: Bessie Creator Award (New York Dance Theatre Workshop, New York)
1991: Fellowship in Sculpture (Western States Arts Federation's; Santa Iron, New United mexican states)
1992: Grant for piece of work in Performance, (California Arts Council; Sacramento, California)
1992: Offsite Installation Grant (Capp Street Project; San Francisco, California)
1992: Rockefeller Foundation Intercultural Moving picture/Video Fellowship (New York)
1993: Best Live Brusque Subject Award for The History of the Luiseno People: La Jolla Reservation Christmas 1990 (American Indian Moving picture Festival; San Francisco, California)
1994: Kinesthesia Residency (Skowhegan School of Painting; Skowhegan, Maine)
1994: Distinguished Visiting Faculty Laurels (University of California, Davis)
1995: Native American Public Broadcasting Consortium Video Grant, "Bringing information technology All Back Abode" video project
2000: Andrea Frank Foundation Grant
2000: Arts International Grant
2001: U.S.–Japan Creative Arts' Program Fellowship, Japan-U.S. Friendship Committee
2001: University of California Regents Lecture (University of California, San Diego)^[14]
2001: Dorantes Lecturer (Santa Barbara Urban center Higher, California)
2002: Creative Capital letter Honor^[15]
2007: Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Fine art^[8]
2011: Honorary PhD from the Establish of American Indian Arts, in Santa Atomic number 26, New Mexico^[16]
2015: Native Arts and Cultures Foundation National Arts Fellowship^[17]
2017: Guggenheim Fellowship^[4]

Quotes [edit]

"I truly alive in two worlds. This 'two earth' concept once posed too much ambiguity for me, every bit I felt torn as to whom I was. In maturity I have come to observe it the source of my power, as I can easily move between these two places and not feel that I have to be i or the other, that I am an Indian in this modernistic society.^[half-dozen]

"Yes. The people are getting upwards there to accept their picture taken with an Indian, but similar they would have their moving picture taken with the bull statue on Wall Street. It'due south there for the taking. Indian people always have been fair game, and I don't think people quite understand that nosotros're non game. Just because I'thousand an identifiable Indian, it doesn't mean I'1000 there for the taking.

Merely in the long run I'm making a statement for me, and through me, most people's interaction with American Indians, and the selective romanticization of us."^[18]

Decease [edit]

Luna had a fatal heart attack in New Orleans, Louisiana, on March 4, 2018, anile 68.^[1]

Encounter besides [edit]

List of Native American artists
List of indigenous artists of the Americas
Visual arts by indigenous peoples of the Americas

References [edit]

^ ^a ^b Pratt, Stacy (2018-03-06). "Noted Indigenous performance creative person James Luna walks on". First American Art Magazine . Retrieved 6 March 2018.
^ ^a ^b "How Luiseno Indian Artist James Luna Resists Cultural Cribbing". JSTOR Daily. 2015-12-25. Retrieved 2017-03-thirteen .
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^east ^f ^g Blocker, Jane (2009). "Seeing Witness: Visuality and the Ethics of Testimony". University of Minnesota Printing . Retrieved March 9, 2018.
^ ^a ^b "John Simon Guggenheim Foundation |James Luna". www.gf.org . Retrieved 2017-04-24 .
^ "James Luna | OCMA | Orange Canton Museum of Art". Archived from the original on 2018-03-10. Retrieved 2018-03-ten .
^ ^a ^b ^c ^d McFadden, David R. (2005). Irresolute Hands: Fine art without Reservation. New York: Museum of Arts and Design. ISBN978-0-295-98781-1.
^ ^a ^b Haas, Lisbeth. Pablo Tac, Ethnic Scholar: Writing on Luiseño Linguistic communication and Colonial History. The Academy of Chicago Press.
^ ^a ^b Biography and Bibliography. James Luna. (retrieved 21 April 2009)
^ "Resume" (PDF). nmai.si.edu.
^ ^a ^b Fernandez-Sacco, E. (2001). "Check your baggage: Resisting whiteness in art history". Fine art Journal. 60 (4): 58–61. doi:10.1080/00043249.2001.10792096. S2CID 191380094.
^ Saracho, A. R. (2014). "Identity and Authenticity: A study of the gimmicky Native American experience through the works of Fritz Scholder and James Luna". ProQuest Dissertations and Theses.
^ ^a ^b Stokstad, Marilyn; Cothren, Michael Watt (2011-01-01). Art history. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. p. 1113. ISBN9780205744220. OCLC 499179296.
^ Righthand, Jess (May 2011). "Q and A with James Luna". smithsonian . Retrieved March 9, 2018.
^ "Archived copy" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 2017-02-02. Retrieved 2017-01-26 . {{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as championship (link)
^ "Surreal Mail Indian Blues & the Origin of the Sun and the Moon".
^ "Noted Multimedia and Performance Artist James Luna Passes Abroad at 67 > Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA)". six March 2018.
^ "James Luna - Native Arts and Cultures Foundation". 6 August 2015.
^ Righthand, Jess (Jan 2011). "Q & A: James Luna: The Native American Artist Talks about his "Take a Picture with a Real Indian" Operation". Smithsonian Magazine.

External links [edit]

The Performance Fine art of James Luna, official site
James Luna, Emendatio, National Museum of the American Indian
James Luna, Vision Project, by Shanna Ketchum-Heap of Birds
James Luna, "I've Always Wanted to be an American Indian"