Museum of Contemporary Native Arts

Oblique Drift: Nicholas Galanin

August 2, 2010 through January 2, 2011


Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, 108 Cathedral Place, Santa Fe, NM 87501 (Click here for a map)

Alaskan artist Nicholas Galanin brings transformative work to the museum from his series, “The Imaginary Indian” in which manufactured Northwest Coast masks are juxtaposed with French toile. Galanin explores the authentic and inauthentic and how interpretation, appropriation and "cultural drift” inform Northwest Coast art. 

This exhibit will showcase the Curtis Legacy where Galanin strips masks, bodies and meaning down to reveal that, "The real strength in survival of indigenous knowledge and culture lies within the ability to freely and creatively represent ourselves." Shifting the colonial gaze from ethnography to pin-up, the Curtis Legacy series includes nude models wearing Indonesian made Tlingit masks. Referencing Edward Curtis photographs of the noble savage, these works lay bare the objectification of both the body and the sacred. Both series of works are brought together in Galanin's examination of globalized culture(s), freedom of cultural expression and the manifestations of change in a world of shifting cultures and ancestral echoes. Tania Willard originally curated Oblique Drift at grunt gallery in Vancouver, B.C, Canada.

Call 505.424.5922 for more information.