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An Indian artist who helped decolonise Christian art has been relegated to the margins in death
Ângela Trindade in the United States.
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Courtesy: Fundação Oriente.
At the first All India Women Artists’ Exhibition in 1936, 27-year-old Ângela Trindade won the gold medal. This was a period when the figure of the professionally trained woman artist was just beginning to emerge in South Asia, with relatively few individuals being able to make a mark that is discernible after nearly a century. Among Trindade’s contemporaries at Bombay’s JJ School of Art was Ambika Dhurandhar, another accomplished artist whose design for a commemorative scroll box for the Maharaja of Baroda’s diamond jubilee won a prize in 1935. Elsewhere, in 1934, the Indo-Hungarian painter Amrita Sher-Gil arrived in Simla with a view to setting up her studio in India. Since the mid-’30s, the three artists’ careers have enjoyed varying fates: Dhurandhar’s work is held largely in private collections and seldom exhibited, while Sher-Gil is one of India’s most famous artists, accorded the status of a navratna by the Indian government in the 1970s, her work permanently on view at the National Gallery of Modern Art in New Delhi. Trindade’s visibility is somewhere in the middle: while low-profile, her paintings are surprisingly accessible – on public display in Panjim’s old Fontainhas neighbourhood.
The ground-floor gallery of Fundação Oriente, a Portuguese cultural organisation, exhibits works by two important Indian artists, the father-daughter pair of António Xavier Trindade and Ângela Trindade. While the place of the elder Trindade in the story of modern Indian art is beginning to be acknowledged, Ângela remains on its margins. Indeed, it wasn’t until 2014 – 54 years after her last show – that a solo exhibition of her works was mounted at Fundação Oriente, titled Lights, Colours and Emotions – An Exhibition of Religious Paintings by Angela Trindade (1909-1980). The collection at Fundação Oriente consists of 59 paintings across a range of mediums (oil, watercolour, China ink and pencil) and types (religious-themed, portraits, landscapes, still lifes and abstracts). Though only nine of these are on permanent public display in a small gallery off the main section, the curation manages to capture a snapshot of Trindade’s changing stylistic trajectory over the decades, loosely paralleling shifts in Indian modernism.
Early influences
But before we delve into Trindade’s Panjim oeuvre and significance as one of India’s early “lady artists”, we must briefly acquaint ourselves with her beginnings. A monograph by historian Fátima da Silva Gracias titled Angela Trindade: A Trinity of Light, Colour and Emotion (2016) draws on existing scholarship, interviews, letters and reportage to provide a wealth of information – perhaps all that is currently known – about the artist and her practice. Born in 1909 to Bombay-based Goans António Xavier and Florentina Trindade, Ângela grew up in Mahim with seven siblings and two cousins. Her father was part of the first generation of colonial Indian art school graduates who achieved success in the salon. A prominent artist of the academic realist Bombay School, he was a faculty member at the JJ School of Art alongside MV Dhurandhar (Ambika’s father) for 28 years. The creative, liberal atmosphere of the Trindade home influenced Ângela to take up art from a young age by scribbling on walls with charcoal, and also probably gave her the impetus to tread what at the time was an unconventional professional path for an Indian woman.
Attending JJ School of Art from 1926 to 1932, while her father was still working there, Trindade not only trained in the dominant realist tradition but also studied closely with JM Ahivasi and principal WE Gladstone Solomon, both proponents of the Bombay Revivalist. This was an artistic movement similar to the contemporaneous one in Bengal, inspired by the precolonial art of the subcontinent, such as Mughal-Rajput miniatures and Ajanta murals. From an interview that Gracias quotes, we learn that Gladstone Solomon included the younger Trindade in his exclusive Indian art class. She says, “It was he, who first started classes in Indian art for a few select students and I was fortunate to be one of them.”
Trindade’s earliest paintings, while still a student, were still lifes, portraits and everyday scenes. In her initial years Trindade hewed to the realism of her father’s art, especially his portraiture, even revisiting his subjects at times. However, since she was exposed to techniques and themes belonging to both Western and Indian aesthetics and drew on both approaches to the canvas at different times in her career, it is challenging to periodise her work by style. For example, the two realist works in the Panjim exhibit that most recall António Xavier were made almost 30 years apart – Punjabi with Mandolin (1949) and Rice Pickers (1977).
Against the backdrop of the Indian independence movement, from the early 1940s up to the late 1950s (during which she also made well-received paintings of MK Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru), Trindade engaged seriously with a project that would dominate her artistry and bring her acclaim in the realm of religious art: the development of an indigenous visual language to decolonise the representation of Christian themes and Biblical scenes. She was in excellent company: during these decades, fellow Goan Angelo da Fonseca was on the same mission, with his sari-draped Madonnas and charpai nativities. Gracias notes that Trindade too painted “more than two dozen Madonnas, depicting her with or without a Child”. In Panjim, the watercolours Our Lady of the Lotus (1941) and Our Lady of Conception (1956) are examples of such a painting. Trindade combines Christian figures and tableaux in the Revivalist style with Indic religious iconography such as lotuses, mudras and chhatras, and wearing Indian accoutrements. To make sense of the lotus in Our Lady of the Lotus, we may turn to a 1951 article titled Art in the Service of the Church, in which Trindade exclaims, “What could more beautifully express the great truth of the Incarnation of Christ raising human nature to a divine dignity than the lotus growing out of mud and blossoming into a glorious immaculate flower!” In Our Lady of Conception, Trindade adorns the protagonist with a maangtikka, gajra and bangles, fashioning her as Madonna devi. Both these Virgin Marys have their hands arranged into mudras, which Trindade felt “very Indian and an effective means of conveying what words or expression cannot”.
Apart from her Madonna series, Trindade composed 45 paintings featuring episodes from the life of Christ, in watercolour and Chinese ink. These images too were peopled by figures recognisable as Indian in colour and culture, transplanting the narrative of Christ into the tropics. Three of these works on view at Fundação Oriente are: Christ Preaching (1948), Baptism on the River Jordan (1948) and Christ (1956). There is a bold, graphic quality to these works, perhaps evidence of the fact that smaller versions of them circulated as devotional or holy pictures, greeting cards and posters, as Gracias reports. In fact, Trindade garnered attention far and wide for her adaptation of Christian art. Her paintings were used not only as objects of domestic devotion and reproduced on front covers of magazines; in 1955 she received a Papal decoration, Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice, and in 1956, 15 of her works were part of a large exhibition of Christian Art in Lucknow, for the catalogue of which she wrote the introduction.
Spiritual themes
Her significance in the world of sacred art gave her opportunities to travel abroad and show in Europe and North America. In 1949, two years after her first solo at Bombay’s Chetana Gallery, Trindade embarked on a three-year tour of the United States at the invitation of the Liturgical Art Society. During this time, she held six exhibitions, delivered lectures, conducted courses and interacted with other artists. Her relationship with the US would only continue to intensify over the next 20 years as she shuttled between that country and India, finally relocating to New York in 1968, to live with her sister. American abstraction may have had an impact on Trindade’s art, propelling her artistic interest in spiritual themes towards a non-representational idiom.
In the late 1950s, the artist was moving towards the philosophy and aesthetic of Tantra, observing a congruence between the Trinity, the trimurti and the tantric form of the trikona that spoke to universal harmony. Working with oil and creating a cubist vocabulary based on triangles – a mode she facetiously dubbed Trindadism – she painted portraits (including of the first couples Kennedy and Ford) as well as religious and secular subjects as kaleidoscopic arrangements of space and light. Comparable in form to the work of Jehangir Sabavala, the two paintings in this style in the Panjim collection – Madonna and Child (1959) and Shakuntala and Deer (1960) – evoke a mysticism, symbols replacing icons in geometries that afford dazzling clarity. In one handwritten note, the artist offers a glimpse into her process: “….the inner eyes sees forms and shadows with more dimensions and connects one point with another, in order to form a picture of the entire whole in three dimensional forms.”
Rice Pickers (1977) was possibly among the last two paintings that Trindade made as an Indian. In February 1978, she became an American citizen and, two years later, she passed away while visiting relatives in São Paolo. The return to the style of her father towards the end of her life holds a certain poignancy. The Trindade father and daughter were close – so much so that she would paint on his behalf, according to his instructions, in his final wheelchair-bound years before his death in 1935. Throughout her life, Trindade tried to preserve António Xavier’s legacy and secure a proper exhibitionary space for his artworks, writing to various government bodies at the municipal, state and national level. Finally, many years after her own death, the AX Trindade Foundation set up by her sister donated many of the two Trindades’ works to the Fundação Oriente. Even so, Ângela’s work could be better served. At the moment, her nine works are mounted like an afterthought in a gallery to the side, replicating the way she has been sidelined in even this genealogy, and putting one in mind of a ritual wherein one has to ask the father’s permission to see the daughter. Still, something is better than nothing, which it could well have been for Indian viewers. Ângela’s works are not easy to come by on public display – some have gone missing (from Lisbon’s Hall of Justice and en route from Brazil to the US), others have been stolen (from the Vatican Pavilion at the Brusses World Fair, 1959). Within India, outside Goa, only four other paintings are on display, at New Delhi’s Apostolic Nunciature, the diplomatic mission of the Vatican City, where access is restricted. It is only in the siesta-steeped afternoons of Panjim that one can spend time at leisure with Ângela and António, together, always at home to the world.
Multimedia Native American Art Exhibition, ‘Boundless,’ Opens at the Mead Art Museum
- Details
- By Kaili Berg
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November 29, 2023
From never-before-exhibited drawings to pages from the Algonquin-language Bible, “Boundless,” a multimedia Native American art exhibition, is on display at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College until Jan. 7, 2024.
“Boundless” gathers the works of more than 150 artists to tell a story of creativity and resistance across the centuries, including sculptures, historical and contemporary writing, photographs, quillwork, musical scores, basketry, and more. At times, the exhibit incorporates objects by non-Native creators to further its inquiries.
“There were so many key items that really inspired me. Because I was doing both Indigenous works and a few non-Indigenous made works in the collection, I focused on works that connected artists,” Heid Erdrich (Ojibwe), a poet and writer who curated the exhibit, told Native News Online.
The exhibition includes items from the Amherst College Collection of Native American Literature and the Mead’s collection, along with key loans from the Northeast region and beyond. Reading rooms within the exhibition even offer guests a chance to engage with Native American-authored and illustrated books.
Erdrich has been working on the exhibit since 2020.
“It was quite the challenge,” Erdrich said. “The thing that was the hardest was developing relationships with Indigenous artists in the area since I was not living on the east coast. I got pointed in the right direction and met some wonderful allies.”
“Boundless” hosts a number of unique objects by authors, artists, and musicians, including drawings by Mary Sully (Dakota), writing by Fritz Scholder (Luiseño), and pages from the Mamusse Wunneetupanatamwe Up-Biblum God, a 1663 Algonquin-language Bible created by a team that included three Indigenous translators and a Nipmuc printer.
Erdrich explained that the Algonquin Bible, also called the Eliot Indian Bible, was the first Bible printed in America. It also became the first translation of the Christian Bible into an Indigenous American language, translated by missionary John Eliot, who set the print, translated, operated the press, and distributed the book.
“He touched each of the pages,” Erdrich said. “It was just a great experience to see the ancestor’s work and how often do we get to know something like that when we see things that have been made anonymous in museum collections.”
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“Boundless” was developed in dialogue with an advisory committee that includes members from the Nipmuc, Wampanoag, Shinnecock, and Mohegan Tribal Nations. The committee received support from staff at Mead Art Museum, Amherst College Archives and Special Collections, and the Five Colleges.
“The exhibition really tries to show all of the connections between the people who work in creative art programs and individual artists, which has helped enormously,” Erdrich said.
The second iteration of “Boundless” will take place this spring at the Mead Art Museum and will focus on more of works from the Northeast Tribes, including Shinnecock, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag artists. It will also expand to include global Indigenous work from Mexico, Australia Aboriginal, and the Amazon.
“It will make the connection on concerns we all have, especially around language and land,” Erdrich said. “It will have a bit of a different feel to it and will be a smaller exhibition.”
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November is celebrated as “Native American Heritage Month.” At Native News Online, we amplify Native voices and share our relatives’ unique perspectives every day of the year. We believe every month should celebrate Native American heritage.
If you appreciate our commitment to Native voices and our mission to tell stories that connect us to our roots and inspire understanding and respect, we hope you will consider making a donation this month to support our work. For those who commit to a recurring donation of $12 per month or more, or make a one-time donation of $150 or greater, we’re excited to offer you a copy of our upcoming Indian Boarding School publication and access to our quarterly Founder’s Circle meetings and newsletter.
Gerry Native’s Bills’ Fiction Book On Sale
A battle is depicted with the use of AI technology to illustrate Travis Carlson’s book, Mafia: Buffalo vs. The Multiverse.
GERRY — A project a year and a half in the making has finally reached its finish line, just in time for holiday shoppers to support its cause.
Travis Carlson, a filmmaker from Gerry and an avid Buffalo Bills fan, created a comic style adventure book, titled, “Mafia: Buffalo vs. The Multiverse.” The book takes a week-by-week journey through the Buffalo Bills season beginning prior to last year, with opponents as fictional characters presenting a challenge to the Buffalo Bills inspired characters, led by “Josh of Allentown.”
A graduate of Cassadaga Valley High School in the Class of 2009, Carlson owns a film company called Pan-American Film Division. From the writing, illustrations, and the promotional trailers for the book, Carlson has been the one steering the ship the whole time. Because of that, this project is one of the most gratifying works of his career.
“It’s incredibly rewarding. This project has been a 15-month labor of love,” Carlson said. Carlson called the completion of the project “a massive relief” because of the amount of work he put into it in all aspects.
Carlson relied on his filmmaking prowess to promote his book, as he organized and directed a video featuring 60 crew members to help his fan fiction vision come to life. The crew composed a four-minute video on May 20 to 21, shot on multiple stories of the Buffalo RiverWorks site. The video was shot on a camera held by a drone, while Carlson directed the action via walkie talkie.
A comic style adventure book, titled, “Mafia: Buffalo vs. The Multiverse,” was created by Gerry native Travis Carlson. The book is now available for purchase.
Photos created by Travis Carlson
Carlson began exploring the concept of his book through writing fan fiction stories in online blogs. Over time, he honed his craft as a writer and began to pursue the idea as a tangible work of art.
“I started this just for my own interest, writing something that I thought would be fun, just for myself,” Carlson said.
His first post had roughly 50 viewers, and even fewer in subsequent posts. “I am now, retrospectively, going to say that proves I was writing it only for myself,” Carlson joked.
Armed with the latest Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, Carlson transformed his stories into a full-length book – well over 200 pages in length – with images he created by using the latest advancements in AI.
“It’s just insane how fast it has moved,” Carlson said of AI advancements in recent years.
Travis Carlson, a Gerry native, directed a Bills Mafia fan fiction video to promote his book, Mafia: Buffalo vs. The Multiverse, back in May. A portion of the book’s proceeds benefit the Pancho Packs initiative to provide school supplies to students in need.
Photo courtesy of Szobski Design
Initially, Carlson asked artists to create the book’s illustrations, but the artists he contacted about contributing to his project all stated they would struggle to produce photographs for use within a week’s timeframe, as Carlson produced the book week by week. That led him to AI, where he created the photos himself with MidJourney, an AI art generator.
“I was able to generate thousands of images,” Carlson said. “It went from being unable to create one image a week, to I was creating 2,000 images a week.”
Producing the images as a work of expression allowed Carlson to use the likeness of athletes and team logos. Carlson compared the use of AI to the development of other technologies over the years, such as the shift from typewriters and traditional portraits to using computers and cameras.
“This book wouldn’t have been possible without the tools that have emerged, literally as we’ve gone through it in the past year,” Carlson said. “I look at it as a tool. The tools aren’t going to replace anybody, it is just changing how much we can do and how fast we can do it.”
As a Gerry native, Carlson feels a strong desire to shine a spotlight on Western New York. That desire was a motivating factor throughout the process of writing and creating the book.
“I would consider Western New York being a little overlooked, especially in the national mindset. Being from here, feeling like an underdog, I have a lot of passion to make great work from here and about western New York,” Carlson said. “This project was one of those endeavors. … It certainly has an incredible amount of tender love and care.”
Carlson has pledged to donate 50% of the revenue to benefit the Pancho Packs initiative, which provides school supplies to students in need. Since the inception of the project and promotional video, more than $20,000 has been raised to benefit the Pancho Packs initiative.
Visit panamericanfilms.com for a link to purchase the book directly, where you can also view a promotional video Carlson created. The book is also available in a few select bookstores across Western New York, including the Good Neighbor Bookstore in Lakewood and Chautauqua Comics in Jamestown.
From Vision to Impact: the Native American Student Association at Elon
This year’s Native American Heritage Month during November marks five years since the founding of the Native American Student Association on Elon’s campus.
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Five years ago, a group of Elon students with Native American heritage recognized the need for a space where they could connect with one another and educate their peers about their unique cultures. This vision led to the creation of the Native American Student Association (NASA).
NASA was formally founded in the spring of 2018 by Arielle Watkins ’18, Bear Tosé ’18 and Xena Burwell ’18. That formal founding followed a vision created years before when the three students conceptualized NASA and laid the groundwork for the club during their first year at Elon. But they saw the full product of their work when the club was officially registered in 2018 during their senior year.
Paula Patch, a senior lecturer in English and the club’s faculty adviser, expressed pride in the club’s growth since its founding. “Over the past five years, this small group of students has kept the organization alive, and they have slowly built up the capacity to host events,” said Patch. “I am very proud of the work that the students have done in the past two years, in partnership with the CREDE especially, to host events and raise awareness of Native and Indigenous culture.”
Jorah Midgette ‘25 is currently president of NASA and said has found a community within the organization. Midgette has dedicated time to creating a safe community for Native American and Indigenous students on campus since she joined the organization during her sophomore year.
“Before coming to Elon, I hadn’t been very educated on my own Native heritage, so being able to explore my own background more while connecting with fellow Native American and Indigenous students has been great!” said Midgette. “As NASA, we want other members and students of the Elon community to know that we are here and that we are hopeful about increasing the conversation around Indigenous and Native American voices on Elon’s campus.”
Patch has been the faculty advisor for NASA since its inception. While the club has continued to grow, due to the very small number of Native-identifying students at Elon, it has been hard to keep the organization full over the years. According to Elon’s 2022-23 Fact Book, students who self-identify as American Indian make up 0.1 percent of Elon’s undergraduate population. Luckily, NASA has been able to partner with the Center for Race, Ethnicity, & Diversity Education (CREDE) to expand its influence throughout the campus and connect with a broader audience.
“Our vetting and continuation process for student organizations is dependent in part on membership numbers, leadership positions, and the availability of members to attend mandatory training,” said Patch. “As the adviser for this organization, I wanted to ensure that the organization could exist even if some of these conditions were not able to be met until Elon has more Native-identifying students.”
Midgette is a member of the Lumbee tribe and hopes to use her position as president to create a closer relationship with the Elon community, highlight the need for inclusivity on campus, and increase educational awareness for Native American- and Indigenous-identifying individuals. Another advocacy goal for NASA is to push for more Native and Indigenous content in the curriculum and more Native- and Indigenous-identifying faculty or staff to be hired.
While NASA’s primary focus is on holding a safe space on campus for Native-identifying students at Elon, the group has slowly built up the capacity to host events on Elon’s campus. NASA is currently looking into hosting a pow-wow or another community event on campus that would allow students to learn more about themselves and their own heritage. They are also hoping to work with Native student organizations at other universities, such as UNC-Greensboro and UNC-Chapel Hill.
Throughout Native American Heritage Month in November, there have been a variety of events that enable students to gain a deeper understanding of themselves and their cultural heritage.
The CREDE has hosted a beading workshop with a local member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, and a virtual art showcase displaying Native American art pieces. NASA is co-hosted an event with the French Club for a film viewing and discussion of the movie, “Kuessipan” on Nov. 15.
With a focus on creating meaningful connections and educational opportunities, NASA continues to empower students to deepen their understanding of their cultural heritage throughout November and beyond.
New art exhibition highlights the Indigenous experience through intergenerational love
ᓵᑭᐦᐃᑐᐊᐧᐠ sâkihitowak ełghąnuwutą they love each other, will be open to public until the end of 2023.
Experience Indigenous history from the perspective of love and joy through a new art exhibition ᓵᑭᐦᐃᑐᐊᐧᐠ sâkihitowak ełghąnuwutą they love each other. The exhibition will be open to community members in the lobby of Jubilee Centre until the end of 2023 from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Monday to Friday.
ᓵᑭᐦᐃᑐᐊᐧᐠ sâkihitowak ełghąnuwutą they love each other
The exhibition features historical images and artworks that highlight the Indigenous experience through intergenerational love. Viewers will be reminded that Indigenous Peoples are more than the historical traumas and institutions that sought to eliminate them. They are people abundant in brilliance, love, resilience and more.
The Journey Home: The Baby Moccasin Project
The gallery will also feature The Journey Home: The Baby Moccasin Project. Organized by Arts Council Wood Buffalo, this exhibit showcases handmade baby moccasins created by local Indigenous artists in memory of loved ones who attended residential schools.
Public Art Wood Buffalo would like to thank Jes Croucher of Pawâmiw Creative, Arts Council Wood Buffalo and Fort McMurray Heritage Society for their collaboration in bringing this exhibition to the community.
Visit rmwb.ca/publicart for more information.
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Native American Heritage Month is ending. Here’s how our Native News team celebrated
Every month is Native American Heritage Month here at MPR’s Native News Initiative. Reporter Melissa Olson and I spend time with our own communities in various ways throughout the year, so November tends to feel like any other month.
However, now we have the honor of building Native News at MPR and making decisions in how we’d like to approach our reporting.
The Native News team put our heads together and decided to get out into community, while sharing events with the public via MPR News’ social media channels. Each of these gatherings brought laughter and conversation, and I hope these highlights provide a connection for you as well.
Statewide one-read program launch in St. Paul
Native News kicked off the month by attending the launch of the statewide one-read program for Minnesota classrooms. The Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community and Minnesota Historical Society Press celebrated the book giveaway Nov. 1 with the authors of “Voices from Pejuhutazizi: Dakota Stories and Storytellers.” The event took place at the Minnesota History Center in St. Paul.
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Rebecca Crooks-Stratton, secretary-treasurer of the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, announced a large donation as a part of its Understand Native Minnesota campaign.
“Through this program we, the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community, are donating 20,000 copies of ‘Voices from Pejuhutazizi’ in response to more than 800 school requests across the state,” Crooks-Stratton said.
We also spoke with authors Walter “Super” LaBatte and Teresa Peterson.
Artist reception at AICHO Galleries in Duluth
On Nov. 4, I went to Duluth for the artist reception for the exhibit, “Mazinibii’igewininiwag: Two Woodland Artists.” Artists Gordon Coons and Steven StandingCloud presented their work to a full house at the American Indian Community Housing Organization (AICHO) Gallery.
As the title of the exhibit suggests, both Coons and StandingCloud create art that reflects the Ojibwe Woodlands style. The art style emphasizes heavy outlines of the figures, which contrasts with a vivid color palette.
StandingCloud said, “My grandmother who actually inspired me a long time ago to be creative and formulate some art pieces. And so she did a lot of floral work on her bead work. And so since I was at a very young age, she actually instilled in me, these images of floral designs.”
“She was giving me some instructions about my identity. So it really meant a lot to me.”
This event was also featured on Art Hounds.
Election Day at Native voter headquarters in Minneapolis
The Native American Community Development Institute (NACDI) in Minneapolis hosted the “Election Day Native Voter Headquarters” event on Nov. 7, which is part of their ongoing program called “Make Voting a Tradition.”
Melissa Olson braved the cold and spoke with event organizers, voters and community members who attended, highlighting their perspectives and experiences regarding civic engagement and the significance of voting in Native communities.
John Williams works at NACDI and said the nonprofit is helping community members understand that their voice matters all year long.
“It’s not just around election time. We take an intergenerational approach to our work. So we’re always talking to elders and to youth about the importance of being involved in your community,” Williams said.
Celebration of American Indian OIC’s impact in Minneapolis
The American Indian Opportunities Industrialization Center (AIOIC) provides education, training and human services to Native people in an environment that embraces culture. The Minneapolis center was created by the American Indian Movement in 1979.
On Nov. 17, 275 guests gathered on the 50th floor of the IDS Center to recognize the work of AIOIC, bid in a silent auction, listen to speakers and have dinner as a community. I saw people taking photos of the city below, lots of Native fashion and happy encounters of people unexpectedly reconnecting with old friends.
The Native Rise event included speakers Lt. Gov. Peggy Flanagan, actress Cara Jade Myers (“Killers of the Flower Moon”), and AIOIC’s president and CEO Dr. Joe Hobot.
“We have an amazing staff and we work with nearly 1,000 of our community members every year,” said Hobot. “So this is our chance to kind of come together and celebrate our successes and really celebrate our community that is doing the work and making a huge impact and stabilizing their lives and lifting up the entire community in the cities and in the state of Minnesota.”
Thank you for joining Native News in our social media event coverage for Native American Heritage Month. I met new people and saw many I hadn’t connected with in a long time.
These community gatherings are such beautiful opportunities to connect, and I’m happy I could share these. I also learned of so many other community celebrations around the state during this process, and I look forward to next year and adventuring out around Minnesota even more so.
St Charles Native Kyle Hamilton Exhibiting During Art Basel Miami Beach
Kyle Hamilton Fine Art is excited to announce participation in Satellite Art Show Miami Beach featuring the works of Artists Lucas Bononi, Ivey Holt, Justyna Kisielewicz and Nereida Patricia. This exhibition will feature works in various formats including Paintings, Wood Cut out, Light Sculptures, Mirrors and reliefs. What unifies this group of Artists is their journey for excellence in their chosen crafts. Kyle Hamilton curates artists he feels are the best in their chosen mediums and conveying their messages in groundbreaking ways. Request Preview via E-Mail to kyle@KyleHamiltonFineArt.com
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Missoula Art Museum calling for Indigenous artists to contribute to new summer exhibit
MISSOULA — As a free resource for the community, the Missoula Art Museum (MAN) is using it’s galleries to spread awareness on an important issue.
The Museum will host a new exhibition in the Summer of 2024, featuring work by Indigenous and Native descendant artists.
The goal is to spread awareness on the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Persons (MMIP) crisis in Montana.
The museum is currently calling for artists across the state to submit work for the exhibition.
The submission deadline for artists is January 5, 2023.
Artists must be indigenous or Indigenous-descendant but can be affiliated with Tribes outside of Montana.
The Missoula Art Museum has invited Rachel Allen to serve as guest curator on the project.
An Indigenous art expert who was born in Great Falls, Allen now works at the Northwestern Museum of Art and Culture in Spokane.
The MAM has stayed committed to showcasing Indigenous art since 1997 when the Lynda Frost Gallery was opened, according to senior curator, Brandon Reintjes.
The Lynda Frost Gallery on the third floor of the museum is dedicated to contemporary Indigenous art.
The current art call, however, is unique to the museum.
“A specialized focus for Indigenous artists and tribal people is something that we haven’t done before, so we’re excited about different ways of inviting people in and being able to showcase art, or become aware of artists that we might not usually work with,” Reintjes says.
The exhibition dedicated to the state’s MMIP crisis will run from May 3 until September 7, 2024.
The artists who are accepted into the exhibition will be notified sometime in February, and a preview of the show for artists and their families will be held on April 22.
The exhibition’s theme is a serious topic, but Reintjes says art can be a great way to spread awareness about one of the state’s toughest issues.
“The more you learn about it and the deeper you go, the more shocking and terrible it is. And it’s one thing that artists’ voices can really lend awareness to and help us understand in different ways. So we’re really hoping that a lot of the submissions that we get, and Rachel’s expert eye with curating, have a way of bringing it together to be outward facing and interact with a broader public.”
Artists can submit applications for the exhibition online, or by emailing Reintjes directly at brandon@missoulaartmuseum.org.
Kerala artist’s Italian ‘Dream’ comes true
Express News Service
KOCHI: Salvador Dali blended the worlds of reality and dreams in most of his artworks. The Spanish legend and his surreal paintings have awed and inspired countless art enthusiasts worldwide, and artist C B Shibu is one among them.
Piqued by Dali’s artworks, which nudge one to explore the subconscious mind, Shibu recently made an oil painting titled ‘Dream’. And that frame has now bagged the second prize at the ongoing Biennale Internazionale dell’ Umorismo nell’ Arte (Festival of Humour in Art) in Italy.
The 32nd edition of the fest, organised by the municipality of Tolentino, showcases 2,400 works by 745 artists from 40 countries. Shibu shared the second spot with Italian artist Sergio Tessarolo. “This was my maiden attempt at this Italian biennale. I wanted the work to be out-of-the-box, surreal,” says Shibu, who hails from Cherai.
“I have been researching the works of Salvador Dali. His dream-like images have nuanced layers, and that inspired me to come up with the painting ‘Dream’.” The work features a vast sea with crimson shimmers of the setting sun. By the shore, two children gaze towards the horizon. Though the description seems like any other sunset painting, on close observation, one notices the sun is ‘setting’ in the middle of the sea.
“The painting can be interpreted in several ways,” explains Shibu. “When we dream, our subconscious mind form multiple random images. Some don’t sync with the real world. Moreover, there was a time when ancient Indians talked about the various suns. The imagery in the ‘Dream’ could well be something set in a parallel universe.”
Though buoyed by the biennale delight, Shibu says financial constraints would not let him travel to Italy. “Artists will have to bear their entire expense. It’s a great opportunity, but I don’t have the wherewithal,” he adds. The 44-year-old has been pursuing art for over two decades now. His big break was receiving the third position in the Aydin Dogan International Cartoon competition held in Turkey in 2007.
Last year, his work, titled ‘The Tree’, received a silver medal in the International Cartoon and Illustration Exhibition conducted by the Chinese government.
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