Past/Present/Future: Expanding Indigenous American, Latinx, Hispanic American, Asian American, and Pacific Islander Perspectives in Thomas J. Watson Library

This multi-site collaborative exhibition was held in honor of the the 500-year anniversary of Colombus' "discovery" of the Americas. Colón (Columbus in Spanish) notably shares the same root of such words as colonialism, colony, and colonize. While this catalog seeks to mark the five centuries since Columbus' arrival, it begs audiences and readers alike to consider: what is there to be "celebrated?" Curators from the Centro Cultural de la Raza in San Diego, CA; Movimiento Artístico del Río Salado (MARS) in Phoenix, AZ; and MEXIC-ARTE Museum in Austin, TX gathered works by artists from southwestern border states with themes relating to colonization—namely invasion, mestizaje (roughly translated as "racial mixing"), and resistance. Focusing on their individual experiences and perspectives as vehicles to understanding the legacy of the colonial narrative, these artists position history as the necessary context to understanding the truth of the present. Artists include Isaac Artenstein, Karen Atkinson, David Avalos, Diana Rodriguez Cárdenas, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Steven Bernard Jones, Jean Lamarr, Carm Little Turtle, Hung Liu, Gilbert "Magu" Luján, James Luna, Vicky Meek, R. Carlos Nakai, Alfred J. Quiróz, Deborah Small, Jaune Quick-To-See Smith, Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie, Regina Vater, and Lawrence M. Yañez.

Growing up in Ameyaltepec—a Nahua village in Guerrero, Mexico—Nicolas De Jesús learned to paint on amate, a traditional bark paper used in Pre-Columbian maps and codices. Although he moved to Chicago in the 1980s, he never abandoned his indigenous heritage or techniques. This catalog, published to accompany the exhibition of the same title, examines three decades of his "poetically subversive" art. De Jesús makes colorful etchings on amate that comment on the complex issues facing immigrants in the United States and his concerns for preserving his cultural identity. The catalog includes works that address crises specific to very recent events in the United States, such as the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021; the repression faced by migrants and African Americans; and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Spanish conquest of the Americas relied heavily on religious painting to impose and cement Christian ideology and to convert existing indigenous populations. Unique styles of painting developed as colonial artists incorporated local flora, fauna, and the natural landscape into their Christian images.

Peruvian-born and New York-based artist Ana de Orbegoso builds off this tradition, using giclée prints to superimpose the faces of contemporary Peruvian women over the stoic, docile, white faces of saints and virgins, and replacing the divine European archetype of western female piety with one that is more representative of the Peruvian people. Part of Urban Virgins as a "decolonization project" consists of parading these updated images through the urban landscape. Like the colonial paintings from which she draws her inspiration, in addition to each photographic collage, she creates costumes to be worn by women on performance walking tours throughout Peru. By taking well known subjects from Cuzco School paintings and revising them to reflect contemporary realities, her work "celebrate[s] the cultural, spiritual and physical diversity of present-day Peru, instead of the conqueror's ideals." This catalog presents Orbegoso’s series alongside trilingual poems by Cusquenian poet Odi Gonzales, to give each virgin a voice in Spanish, English, and Quechua, representing the plurality and complexity of Peru today.

This woodcut novelette by Bronx-based artist and educator John Vasquez Mejias is composed of 96 hand-carved woodblocks, offset printed onto newsprint and bound and tied with a single red thread. It tells the story of Puerto Rican revolutionaries fighting against American colonialism in the 1950s. After the Jones Act of 1917 mandated U.S. citizenship for the entire island, the Ley de la Mordaza, or "Gag Law" (technically Law 53 of 1948), attempted to suppress the growing independence movement in Puerto Rico by making it a crime to display the Puerto Rican flag; to sing, speak, or write of independence; or to hold any assembly to discuss the issue. Vazquez Mejias, a passionate storyteller and masterful printmaker, retells this complicated—and often willfully omitted—history from the perspective of a contemporary Nuyorican.

Venus Envy is the eighth book in the CHICANX/LATINX SERIES from bookmaker Felicia Rice and Moving Parts Press. This accordion book chronicles Amalia Mesa-Bain’s series of autobiographical altar-installations undertaken between 1993 and 2008, combining historic photographs with texts by art historian and critic Jennifer A. González. The book situates the life stages of the Chicana artist—early childhood through old age—within a historical continuum from the time of the Aztec Empire, to the colonial period of European expansion, to the present. Mesa-Bains plays with a multicultural iconography to negotiate the liminal spaces between folk and fine art, tradition and innovation, and Latin heritage and contemporary Chicano culture.

Jorge Garza (aka Qetza) is an illustrator and storyteller from Indiana known for his Azteca Pop art style. Tetlacatl, an Aztec robot that fights monsters in outer space, is the artist’s invention. These short mini-comic style artist's books, coined "Aztec-Kaiju" by Garza, are equally inspired by pre-Hispanic codices depicting indigenous deities and Japanese animated cartoon series of the 1960s and 70s.

Jorge Garza (aka Qetza) is an illustrator and storyteller from Indiana known for his Azteca Pop art style. Tetlacatl, an Aztec robot that fights monsters in outer space, is the artist’s invention. These short mini-comic style artist's books, coined "Aztec-Kaiju" by Garza, are equally inspired by pre-Hispanic codices depicting indigenous deities and Japanese animated cartoon series of the 1960s and 70s.

The Puro Chingón Collective—comprised of Austin-based artists Claudia Aparicio-Gamundi, James Huizar, and Claudia Zapata—was formed in 2012, after the publication of the first issue of ChingoZine, an arts publication featuring a uniquely LatinX perspective on current topics. Some issues address lighthearted themes related to popular culture, such as issue 5 which features reflections about the late Chicana-pop icon Selena Quintanilla. Others feature more serious political themes, such as issue 6.5 which gathers graphic contestations to the 2017 Texas Senate Bill 4 [SB4], and issue 7.5 which responds to U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Their 2014 issue, DO EAST!, was a special edition created for EAST (East Austin Studio Tour) and features the work of graffiti artist Federico Archuleta (a.k.a. El Federico). Putting his own spin on traditional calaveras (skulls), El Federico adorns one with a cowboy hat, bejeweled grills, and brow line sunglasses, and forms another from a generalized Mixtec deity DJing a turntable.

The Puro Chingón Collective—comprised of Austin-based artists Claudia Aparicio-Gamundi, James Huizar, and Claudia Zapata—was formed in 2012, after the publication of the first issue of ChingoZine, an arts publication featuring a uniquely LatinX perspective on current topics. Some issues address lighthearted themes related to popular culture, such as issue 5 which features reflections about the late Chicana-pop icon Selena Quintanilla. Others feature more serious political themes, such as issue 6.5 which gathers graphic contestations to the 2017 Texas Senate Bill 4 [SB4], and issue 7.5 which responds to U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Their 2014 issue, DO EAST!, was a special edition created for EAST (East Austin Studio Tour) and features the work of graffiti artist Federico Archuleta (a.k.a. El Federico). Putting his own spin on traditional calaveras (skulls), El Federico adorns one with a cowboy hat, bejeweled grills, and brow line sunglasses, and forms another from a generalized Mixtec deity DJing a turntable.

The Puro Chingón Collective—comprised of Austin-based artists Claudia Aparicio-Gamundi, James Huizar, and Claudia Zapata—was formed in 2012, after the publication of the first issue of ChingoZine, an arts publication featuring a uniquely LatinX perspective on current topics. Some issues address lighthearted themes related to popular culture, such as issue 5 which features reflections about the late Chicana-pop icon Selena Quintanilla. Others feature more serious political themes, such as issue 6.5 which gathers graphic contestations to the 2017 Texas Senate Bill 4 [SB4], and issue 7.5 which responds to U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Their 2014 issue, DO EAST!, was a special edition created for EAST (East Austin Studio Tour) and features the work of graffiti artist Federico Archuleta (a.k.a. El Federico). Putting his own spin on traditional calaveras (skulls), El Federico adorns one with a cowboy hat, bejeweled grills, and brow line sunglasses, and forms another from a generalized Mixtec deity DJing a turntable.

The Puro Chingón Collective—comprised of Austin-based artists Claudia Aparicio-Gamundi, James Huizar, and Claudia Zapata—was formed in 2012, after the publication of the first issue of ChingoZine, an arts publication featuring a uniquely LatinX perspective on current topics. Some issues address lighthearted themes related to popular culture, such as issue 5 which features reflections about the late Chicana-pop icon Selena Quintanilla. Others feature more serious political themes, such as issue 6.5 which gathers graphic contestations to the 2017 Texas Senate Bill 4 [SB4], and issue 7.5 which responds to U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement (ICE). Their 2014 issue, DO EAST!, was a special edition created for EAST (East Austin Studio Tour) and features the work of graffiti artist Federico Archuleta (a.k.a. El Federico). Putting his own spin on traditional calaveras (skulls), El Federico adorns one with a cowboy hat, bejeweled grills, and brow line sunglasses, and forms another from a generalized Mixtec deity DJing a turntable.

Drawing on his experiences living on both sides of the United States-Mexico border, as well as his journey to U.S. citizenship, Enrique Chagoya provides viewers with harmless popular characters as deceptively friendly points of entry to contemplate a much more serious message. By juxtaposing familiar pop icons with a historical lexicon of pre-Hispanic religious symbols, Chagoya addresses the issue of immigration with coy, satirical humor.

In form, Chagoya’s books follow their Mesoamerican antecedents, using amate paper (made from wild fig tree bark) folded in the traditional accordion style, read from right to left, and paginated with Mayan numerals. Some of the images used in this work are explicit allusions to the Florentine Codex, a 16th century chronicle of Mixtec culture and the Spanish conquest of Tenochtitlan. Quetzalcoatl—a feathered serpent deity from the Aztec pantheon—stretches across the top of this single-sheet lithograph, while panels underneath reference recent headlines that portray the collapse of the United States as an economic and utopian promised land: a meteor shower falling on a graph depicting the declining value of a hedge fund; a house on fire alluding the mortgage crisis; and a man resting in a hammock above a 9.2% figure, referencing the unemployment rate at the time.

The Ombú tree—a rapid-growing evergreen with an umbrella-like canopy, native to South America—serves as a beautiful metaphor for Rimer Cardillo’s expansive work in this mid-career retrospective. By using a variety of media and techniques—prints, site-specific installations, handmade paper sculptures, as well as photo- and film-based documentary work—Cardillo conveys his deep commitment to sustainability, supporting diverse ecologies, restoring natural environments, and protecting and preserving vulnerable environments, cultures, and peoples. In this exhibition catalog, honoring the artist’s longstanding relationship with the Art Museum of the Americas, Cardillo explores the human footprint on wildlife, flora, and landscapes across a vast geography, ranging from his native Uruguay to the grasslands of New York’s Hudson Valley where he currently lives and works. In a world where the indigenous and the native are increasingly under threat, Cardillo’s work draws inspiration from native histories as well as natural textures, colors, and design to formulate his own coded visual language that critiques contemporary conditions created by turbulent, undemocratic regimes in Latin America.

Lugo’s work reveals a different side of American history, informed by his experience growing up in a hard-working, tight-knit Puerto Rican family in the Kensington neighborhood of South Philadelphia. Working with porcelain—a traditionally precious material associated with European aristocratic opulence and imperial wealth—Lugo brandishes the surfaces of his vessels with images of poverty, inequality, and social and racial injustice. This catalog of his most recent works was published in 2021 by Wexler Gallery. The title is taken from a 2014 performance piece of the same name, in which Lugo fashioned a makeshift potter’s wheel in an abandoned lot in South Philly from discarded, found scraps and threw a clay vessel made from the surrounding dirt mixed with the liquid from a 40oz bottle of malt liquor. The photographs in this volume showcase Lugo’s impressive vessels against a stark white background as well as installation views from some of his various exhibitions. One of Lugo’s pieces (not included in this publication) is featured in the long-term installation, "Before Yesterday We Could Fly: An Afrofuturist Period Room," on view at The Met in Gallery 508.

Pavel Acevedo was born in Oaxaca, Mexico, and now lives and works in Riverside, CA. Working as a printmaker and muralist allows him to explore topics of migration, immigration, borders, and the duality immigrants like himself face leaving their homeland and moving to a new nation. Made to accompany his culminating solo exhibition in honor of his Beyond the Press residency at Self Help Graphics & Art, this catalog is a visual documentation of the artist’s printmaking process and the body of work he created during his time there. His experimental color serigraphs visualize Zapotec oral histories, combining images of mythological characters—inspired by otherworldly, half-human, half-animal creatures (nahuales)—with the words of stories passed from generation to generation through spoken word. Included in the catalog is a QR code linking to sound recordings of two Zapotec legends: "The Story of Nine Points (La Historia de Nueve Puntas)," spoken by Tomasa Antonia Garcia in Zapotec, and "History of the Zapotecs in Loxicha (Historia de los Zapotecos en Loxicha)," spoken by Minerva Mendoza Pérez De San Agustine Loxicha in Zapotec.

This elaborate work from New Jersey-based artist Sandra C. Fernandez combines text from 16th-century Spanish writings on the Americas with antique crocheted fragments, waxed linen thread, red willow twigs, leather, silk threads, and inkjet photos on various handmade Japanese papers. The result is a nine-panel folded accordion book housed in a wooden box and resting on a crocheted hammock. This book reflects Fernandez’s broader work to consider transborder and cross-temporal experiences of displacement, memory, and identity. Through images of scars and stiches, and in our attempts to read text concealed behind layers of fabric and paper, Souvenirs challenges viewers to consider the struggles to overcome hardships of all kinds. The juxtaposition of these difficult visual elements cast alongside the delicate beauty of the surrounding threadwork and antique lace reminds us that life is a balance between beauty and pain, loss and joy.

This catalog accompanied an exhibition showcasing the individual and joint works of Allan deSouza and Yong Soon Min. On the cover is a photograph of deSouza and Min’s collaborative installation project, "alter idem/performing personae" (1992), in which the artists perform roles that graft together two parts of their identities: persons of the Asian diaspora and artists. As "native informants" allowing "discovery" of various ethnically-coded tourist sites in Los Angeles, the artists position the viewers as "ethnographers," empowering them to scrutinize the modern culture of photography, the construction and performance of identity, and the responsibilities of documentation and representation for cultural research.

This is an artist's book by Jesse Chun based on her series of works titled "Blueprints" from 2016. The book is a collection of Chun’s immigration papers sourced from various countries which were then archived, copied, and printed onto translucent vellum paper. Devoid of text and removed from its original bureaucratic function, the forms' remaining lines and grids offer room for viewers to build their own stories of transition and belonging.

Texas Long Grain is a collection of photographs and short poems by Asian American photographers from across the United States. Lion dances, funeral offerings, sewing factory workers, and families gathered together, eating, laughing, holding one another—these sights are as familiar to the artists as a sack of rice. The book was edited by artists Jim Dong, Zand Gee, and Crystal K.D. Huie, and was published by the Kearny Street Workshop—a collective of writers, artists, and musicians formed in San Francisco's Manilatown in 1972 that today is celebrated as the longest-standing multidisciplinary Asian Pacific American arts organization.

Nā wahi pana ʻo Koʻolau Poko features Kapulani Landgraf's black and white photographs of sacred sites in the Windward district of Oʻahu, Hawaiʻi, taken in response to rapid development on Hawaiian land. The photographs are accompanied by descriptions of each site’s historical and mythological significance, which were sourced from the scholarship of native historians. The descriptions are in ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi (the Hawaiian language) and loosely translated into English, putting the Kānaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) voice and perspective at the forefront.

Silent Stories is an artist's book by Angel Velasco Shaw, published in conjunction with an art installation of the same title from 1982. It is a compilation of photographs and interviews with eighteen people whom Shaw identifies as "subjects of the cultural melting pot": native-born Asians, American-born Asians, or those of both Asian and Caucasian heritages. In these shared stories, Shaw points out the continued need for validation and acceptance of Asian Americans by bringing to the surface internalized and alienating experiences of being perpetually treated as a foreigner in one’s own country based solely on outward appearances.

This catalog accompanied a traveling exhibition of paintings by Roger Shimomura, a third-generation Japanese American artist. The works are inspired by diaries kept by the artist’s grandmother, Toku Machida Shimomura, which contained keen observations of her family’s lives from immigrating to the US as a picture bride in 1912, throughout World War II, and until her death in 1963. The artist, who himself was interned in Idaho’s Minidoka War Relocation Center by Executive Order 9066 of 1942, donated his extensive collection of objects made in Japanese internment camps to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History in 2016.

Dinh Q. Lê: Memory for Tomorrow is a catalog published to accompany the artist’s first solo exhibition in Asia that took place at the Mori Art Museum in 2015 and the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in 2016, both in Japan. Coinciding with the 40th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War and the 70th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, the exhibition highlights the artist’s practice of weaving together multiple narratives about the Vietnam War. Such narratives, whether personal, official, or fictional, coalesce in the installation work "Light and Belief: Sketches of Life from the Vietnam War" (2012), which features 102 drawings by and interviews with surviving Vietnamese soldier-artists who documented North Vietnam’s war efforts.

Ghosts: Seventy Portraits presents a selection of paintings by the late Chinese-born artist Hung Liu, who used historical black and white photographs as a point of departure for her work. Her subjects range from Chinese to American, and include 19th-century historical figures, orphaned children, anonymous laborers, prostitutes, and refugees to her past self. Beyond making history and memory palpable in the present, Liu's summoned portraits unveil that we are all migrating, displaced people. In the artist's own words, "we are all from somewhere else. Therefore, we are all refugees of some sort, emigrants or immigrants, migrants or émigrés. We carry ourselves, our ancestors' ghosts, to wherever we have gone or are going, and we follow them back as far as their images will take us."

Dong Kingman: An American Master was published on the occasion of the first retrospective exhibition of Dong Kingman’s work after his death, organized by the Institute of Chinese Culture and Arts in 2000. The exhibition chronicles Kingman’s seven-decade career, which took him across the United States and to cities around the globe as cultural ambassador and international lecturer for the Department of State. His extensive travels are captured in numerous cityscapes, and he became a leading figure of American—especially Californian—watercolor. One cityscape from 1960 is titled "Self-portrait," which reflects his adopted name Kingman as a compound of two Cantonese words meaning "scenery" and "composition."

Queer power! A Time Travelling Coloring Book is an artist’s book that reproduces a series of black-and-white drawings by Chitra Ganesh. Based on images circulating in the media, various archives, and the artist's own collection of photographs, Ganesh's work depicts activists, artists, and celebrities in popular culture; significant landmarks in queer history; Lenape settlements and their land's indigenous flora and fauna; and all forty-four gender non-conforming individuals murdered in the United States in 2020. The artist's book thus both documents and celebrates LGBTQIA+ history. Yet, as a coloring book that invites us to reach in and color to our heart's desire, Queer power! also beckons us to reconsider our complicated relationship with icons and public images—especially so when we turn to the pages that Ganesh has reserved for us to include our own figures worthy of commemoration.

Jack G. Shaheen is a scholar and writer noted for addressing racial and ethnic stereotypes proliferated by American media. His work is informed by a significant body of visual material he has compiled over many years, including films, magazine covers, newspaper comic strips, popular novels, movie posters, board games, t-shirts, Halloween costumes, toys, figurines, and other collectibles. A is for Arab: Archiving Stereotypes in U.S. Popular Culture reproduces numerous objects from the Jack G. Shaheen Archive at New York University's Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.

This catalog accompanied a 2020-2021 exhibition held at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts (MoCNA) in Santa Fe, NM. It was co-curated by Dr. Suzanne Fricke (IAIA Art History Faculty), Chelsea Herr (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma), and Dr. Manuela Well-Off-Man (MoCNA Chief Curator).

"The essays and artworks present the future from a Native perspective and illustrate the use of Indigenous cosmology and science as part of tribal oral history and ways of life. Several of the artists use sci-fi related themes to emphasize the importance of Futurism in Native cultures, to pass on tribal oral history and to revive their Native language. However, Indigenous Futurisms also offers a way to heal from the traumas of the past and present—the post-apocalyptic narratives depicted in some of the artworks are often reality for Indigenous communities worldwide."—Book Summary

In this solo exhibition from 2019, Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) artist Skawennati uses digital avatars to create a fictitious Indigenous cyberspace called Sky World, a sustainable, advanced, and peaceful utopia untouched by colonialism. The exhibition was curated by Matthew Ryan Smith, and was held at the McIntosh Gallery at Western University and the University of Waterloo Art Gallery, both in Ontario, Canada. The exhibition’s dual-language (English and French) catalog features a neon array of images, "machinimagraphs" (a term the artist uses for images made in a virtual environment), and avatars from the artist’s cyber world.

Skawennati creates "machinimas" (a combination of "machine" and "cinema," i.e. films created in the virtual environment) using the massively-multiplayer online virtual environment Second Life (SL). SL gives players the ability to create an avatar, build virtual environments, and interact with other online users. Skawennati uses it to explore Indigenous representation in the digital world. Towards the beginning of the book, she states: "I fear that if Indigenous people cannot envision ourselves in The Future, we will not be there. We need to visualize ourselves as full participants in the multi-mediatized world of today and tomorrow to help ourselves become active agents in the shaping of new mediums and new societies."

This solo exhibition of works by Neal Ambrose-Smith (Flathead Salish, Métis, and Cree; descendent of the Confederate Salish and Kootenai Nation of Montana) was held at the Missoula Art Museum from August 2021 to March 2022. The accompanying catalog features recent prints, paintings, drawings, sculpture, and neon that interconnect Native stories, such as the trickster shapeshifting Coyote, with imagery from popular culture, such as Alice in Wonderland, Where the Wild Things Are, Star Trek, and Star Wars. The title is presented in both the Séliš and English languages, and the catalog features essays by Brandon Reintjes, John Calsbeek, and Lara Evans.

This exhibition, which ran from October 2019 to October 2020 at the Museum of Northern Arizona, featured the work of 25 artists representing more than a dozen Native American groups whose ancestral lands are in the American Southwest. Curated by ethnologist Tony Thibodeau, the works in the exhibition reflect well-known characters and themes from the Star Wars franchise, highlighting the parallels that exist between the films and Native imagery, stories, and experiences. The accompanying catalog includes photographs of work from the show, as well as essays from the museum’s Director, the exhibition's curator, and other scholars.

This limited-edition catalog accompanied a solo exhibition of intricate paintings and color pencil drawings by Star Wallowing Bull (Ojibwe, Arapahoe) that took place at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, ND in 2015. Wallowing Bull often pulls from his childhood experiences to depict robots and other mechanized figures, as well as recognizable pop culture icons such as Transformers, Yoda, and Mickey Mouse wearing traditional Native American regalia. The title for the exhibition was inspired by the artist’s affinity for the Transformers franchise, as well as his own transformation within his artistic practice from paper and pencil to canvas and paint.

The catalog includes an introduction by Colleen J. Sheehy, an essay by Netha Cloeter, an interview between Wallowing Bull and Laura Youngbird, and 28 full-page color plates of the artist’s works. The cover of the catalog features his painting "The Optimator" (2014, acrylic on canvas), which is described by Cloeter as a "headdress-wearing, American Indian Movement-affiliated relative of Optimus Prime [a main character from 'Transformers']" who "inherits his name from a beer on tap in a Fargo restaurant, reflecting the transfer of pop culture references between commodities… He is simultaneously a representation, a commodity, and a cipher."

This 2016 exhibition, curated by Leena Minifie (Gitxaała), took place at the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. The title of the show comes from a work by artist Sonny Assu which depicts the superhero Spiderman using traditional Kwakwa̱ka̱'wakw motifs. In fact, all of the artists in the show utilize the style, aesthetic, and characters of modern comic books as a vehicle for retelling oral Native stories. Since its inauguration, the exhibition also traveled to other cultural institutions, including the Art Gallery of Grande Prairie (2018) and the University of Winnipeg (2019). The accompanying catalog continues the curator’s dialogue on supernatural characters in Indigenous art within the context of modern comic superheroes. It includes additional essays by three North American Indigenous scholars: Antonio R. Chavarria (Santa Clara Pueblo), Dr. Lee Francis IV (Laguna), and Dr. Elizabeth LaPensée (Anishinaabe; Métis; Irish).

First American Art Magazine, a quarterly publication established in 2013, is dedicated to the historical and contemporary art of Indigenous peoples whose ancestral lands are in the Americas. It primarily focuses on the work of living artists, and includes artist profiles and interviews, exhibition reviews, and feature articles. The cover of Issue No. 15 shows a 1995 beadwork piece by artist Marcus Amerman (Choctaw) titled "Moonrise Over the Little Bighorn," which depicts Hunkpapa Lakota leader Sitting Bull set against a starry night sky and blue-tinted moon. The issue includes an interview with Amerman (who is known for his "Photo-Beadalism," a term coined by the artist to describe his photorealistic beadwork); portraits of Native cultural icons; celebrities; and pop culture icons such as Wonder Woman and Scully and Mulder from The X-Files. "I like the idea of combining two things that don’t usually go together," Amerman shared in the interview. "It’s my story, it’s the story of my art, and it’s the story of my people."

Apsáalooke (Crow) artist Wendy Red Star works in a variety of media to challenge stereotypes and romanticized representations of Indigenous people. She tackles issues such as colonialism and the environment, often with elements of humor. In line with themes of Indigenous Futurism, Red Star’s work reexamines the historical narratives of Indigenous people. It also envisions alternate Native realities, such as in her 2021 series "A Float for the Future," which according to her website, "reimagines the traditional Crow Fair Parade for an altered world." Wendy Red Star: Delegation is the artist’s first career retrospective monograph, co-published by Aperture and Documentary Arts. It includes a variety of essays, stories, poems, and full-page spreads of the artist’s work, as well as an interview between the artist and Josh T. Franco.

This catalog accompanied a 2021 solo exhibition of works by Jeffrey Gibson (Mississippi Choctaw, Cherokee), held at Robert’s Projects gallery in Culver City, CA. The exhibition featured bold, geometric new beadworks that explore themes and issues related to LGBTQIA identity. The title of the exhibition comes from a similarly-titled 1969 print by Sister Corita Kent, which depicts images of Jesus, Martin Luther King, Jr., John F. Kennedy, and Robert Kennedy surrounded by a quote by E.B. White: "It can be said of him, as of few men in like position, that he did not fear the weather and did not turn his sails, but instead, challenged the wind itself to improve its direction and to cause it to blow more softly and more kindly over the world and its people."

"I engage materials and techniques as strategies to describe a contemporary narrative that addresses the past in order to place oneself in the present and to begin new potential trajectories for the future."—Jeffrey Gibson (from the New Museum exhibition "Jeffrey Gibson: The Anthropophagic Effect")

Virgil Ortiz: Revolution is a mid-career retrospective of New Mexico-based artist Virgil Ortiz (Cochiti Pueblo), which features more than 200 works of art selected by the artist. Ortiz is a multidisciplinary artist whose repertoire includes ceramics, photography, graphic art, fashion design, and glass art. He comes from a family of well-known potters, who have influenced the development of his distinct black-and-white geometric Cochiti style. Through this inherited pottery tradition, Ortiz intersects Cochiti Pueblo history and culture with post-apocalyptic themes, pop culture, and science fiction. One recurring theme in Ortiz’s work is the reconciliation of past traumas—such as the events that led to the Pueblo Revolt of 1680—within futuristic settings, such as in his "Pueblo Revolt 2180" series.

The page displayed here features a line-up of Ortiz’s "Venutian Soldiers" (2012), superhero-like warriors of the artist’s invention. The soldiers possess super strength and magical powers, and stand over eight feet tall donning gas masks and other post-apocalyptic attire. Their society has been destroyed by the Castilians, and their environment has been overexploited. The Venutian Soldiers—who represent this devastation—must find a new hospitable land in which to live and rebuild their ancestral traditions.

The title of this monograph of Alaska-based artist Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit, Unangax̂) refers to a Tlingit entrance dance in which the dancer’s face is unmasked and visible. The book examines the wide range of multidisciplinary works within the artist’s oeuvre, and includes an introduction by Merritt Johnson and a conversation between the artist and Negarra A. Kudumu.

The work featured here is "Things are Looking Native, Native’s Looking Whiter" (2012), which juxtaposes a photo of a Hopi woman (originally taken by Edward S. Curtis) with a promotional photo of Princess Leia from the Star Wars franchise—the similarity of the two women’s hairstyles is apparent. Galanin’s critique against the representation and appropriation of Native culture is multilayered, reclaiming Native-inspired aesthetics that were later used by non-Indigenous people. The piece also embodies the artist’s efforts towards "creative sovereignty." "To hold sovereignty in our creativity means we decide when and how to be," Galanin explained to Kudumu in their conversation.

This publication contains nine scholarly essays by Kristina Baudemann on topics relating to the Indigenous Futurism movement. It is a revised version of Baudemann’s doctoral dissertation, Signifying Futures: Future Imaginaries in Indigenous North American Literatures and New Media Arts. In it, the author examines both visual and written works that fall within the model of Indigenous Futurism, including two essays on Mohawk artist Skawennati.

Published by Minor Matters Books, Never Forget is a limited-edition accordion book dedicated to a monumental installation work of the same title by Alaska-based artist Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit, Unangax̂). The original installation was on view at the 2021 Desert X festival in Palm Springs, CA, and measured 60' by 360'. Galanin’s work refers to the famous Hollywood sign, using the phrase “Indian Land" to challenge the colonial and racist history of the movie industry while simultaneously engaging viewers to contemplate the deep-rooted connections of Indigenous Americans to the land. The book includes texts by Candice Hopkins, Merritt Johnson, Gerald Clarke Jr, and Neville Wakefield, and photography by Lance Gerber.

Tammy Nguyen's hand-assembled artist's book, Atomic Sublime, brings us the surreal, purple-hued sunsets of the American Southwest. Haunting and complicating the awe-inspiring landscape, however, is its past and ongoing relationship with nuclear weapons. Essays by Lovely Umayam, writer and founder of Bombshelltoe Policy and Arts Collective, illuminate what the Grand Canyon and the Nevada Test Site witnessed during the United States' history of developing nuclear weapons.

Through her bioregional maps and paintings, Los Angeles-based artist Sandy Rodriguez performs her own Reconquista of the territories violently taken by European settlers five hundred years ago. With her extensive research of pre-colonial and colonial pigments and mapping techniques, and her use of native plants and earth dyes on amate paper (made from wild fig tree bark), Rodriguez foregrounds indigenous knowledge and bridges cross-temporal senses of space to respond to crises plaguing the region today, including migration, displacement, and climate change. Todd Wingate, curator of this catalog’s accompanying exhibition, states that Rodriguez "reclaim[s] the ancient tradition of recording knowledge through painting" and "in the process, she decolonizes our past, offering hope for our present and a more just future for the Americas." This catalog was made possible by the Riverside Art Museum and James Irvine Foundation.

Haida artist Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas has created a hybrid artform he refers to as "Haida Manga," which combines traditional Haida motifs and stories with Japanese manga-style comic book illustration. Carpe Fin is the hand-painted prequel to his first graphic novel, Red (2009). It recounts the Haida tale of Carpe, a man who has been abandoned at sea during a hunt and left to face the Lord of the Rock. As Carpe proceeds through his trek, he confronts an environment whose land and resources have been overexploited. Perhaps a precautionary environmental warning, Yahgulanaas prefaces the tale with "Once upon a time this could be a true story…". Carpe Fin is also a 6' x 19' monumental watercolor mural, commissioned by the Seattle Art Museum in 2018.

On Contested Terrain was published in conjunction with a 2020-2021 traveling exhibition organized by the Carnegie Museum of Art. It was the first comprehensive survey of An-My Lê's oeuvre, which she has dedicated to exploring the complexity that envelops war. A significant body of the large-format black-and-white and color photographs from across Lê’s career portray the American Landscape staged for conflict and warfare: borders are manipulated and patrolled; borders sites are reserved for warfare training or reenactments for entertainment; and public statues mark increasingly polarized grounds.

Aztlán is the ancestral home of the Aztec peoples. Believed to be located somewhere in northwestern Mexico or the southwestern United States, it is mentioned in many colonial ethnohistorical chronicles of the migration of the Mexica people to central Mexico. Creating Aztlán is an interdisciplinary text that considers the pivotal role this ancestral land has played in Chicano and Indigenous art and culture in the United States. Dylan A. T. Miner deploys indigenous methodologies to analyze works by Nora Chapa Mendoza, Gilbert "Magú" Luján, Santa Barraza, Malaquías Montoya, Carlos Cortéz Koyokuikatl, Favianna Rodríguez, and Dignidad Rebelde (which includes Melanie Cervantes and Jesús Barraza), to ultimately assert that their visualizations of Aztlán are a form of Indigenous sovereignty.

Pilina Everlasting is an artist’s book by Allison Leialoha Milham, a Kanaka Maoli (Native Hawaiian) artist, musician, and educator. The book is dedicated to Milham's mother, Mary Alice Ka'iulani Milham, who fought to protect Mauna Kea—a dormant volcano on the island of Hawai’i— before passing away from pancreatic cancer. Along with a pamphlet featuring an essay by her mother, Milham nestles in a hand-printed accordion book and a 7-inch vinyl record into a box that sings—like a music box when opened—of loss, transformation, and pilina (connection, relationship) within the ever-shifting landscapes of Hawai’i.