Three Artists from The Persistence of History exhibit

Michi Suazo

November 13, 2018

Professor Doric Cacoilo

Activists, Interlopers, and Pranksters

1.)    

Three artists I chose from “The Persistence of History” exhibit are Gaku Tsutaja, Roger Shimomura, and Jaune Quick-to-See Smith. The pieces they have contributed for the exhibition lines up perfectly with what I am trying to do with my semester project (which is to highlight women artists who seek to incorporate activism in their work).

Roger Shimomura’s American Guardian (2008) made an impactful statement on the harsh reality that Japanese immigrants faced when they were put in internment camps during World War II. Gaku Tsutaja’s The Project to Dismantle the Enola Gay (2018) was innovative in its way of portraying immigrants in America as parakeets that are trying to burn down the Enola Gay before it could deal its damage. Jaune Quick-to-See Smith’s enthralling painting, Trade Canoe: The Dark Side (2017-2018), portrayed a white colonist and a Native American warrior at opposite ends of a trade canoe with a mountain of bones between them. Her piece spoke about racism and the genocide of Native American peoples planned by European colonists. All three of these pieces touch up on elements of activism. They made a statement on the cultural divide brought upon by conflicts of the east and west, and then later on amplified by war; the detrimental effects of an unfair trade; and the portrayal of different lenses used to view a situation. I think these artists (and of course the others who participated in this exhibit, too) did wonderfully to sublimate oppression into art.