In the early nineteenth century, an American painter George Catlin believed that the Native American people were going to extinct in the future. [1] Living in this modern world, people know Catlin’s estimation was not right. There are still Native American people around, and they often live in the community with Non-Native Americans. Although, it could be right to say that what Catlin saw as a true aesthetics has already gone from modern Native American cultures. Over the centuries, Native Americans have adjusted to European cultures, and as a compensation, they lost some of their lifestyles, cultural beliefs, and identities. 

The influence that white people had on the cultures and identities of  Native Americans was something never should be overlooked. Philip J. Deloria argues that, by the twentieth century, the colonizer’s perception of Native Americans being “others” has been completed through the government’s political decisions. Native Americans became a symbol of playfulness, laziness, and modernist corruptions, and colonizers believed those are the Native Americans’ authenticity. Being forced to live in the reservations, Native Americans took that perception as an advantage to create a job market. Native Americans started to play the role of American Indians within a story written by white people. In fact, those roleplaying has shaped a part of their Native American identities too. [2] The audience of this exhibition will be able to find some playfulness within some of the art pieces. That notion of playfulness can be corresponded to this "created" identity of Native Americans.

Until the mid-twentieth century, the US art world has kept the certain expectation toward Native American artists and prohibited them from taking European art influences into their artworks. Scholars believed that if a Native American artist stopped expressing his indigenous identity, they cannot recognize him as a Native American artist. Oscar Howe was the first artist who broke those academic standards, questioning what Native American art means to the artists and Non-Native American viewers. Many of Native American artists today still work on that question. Their artworks often express their identities; both as Native Americans, and as individuals. This exhibition focuses on how modern Native American artists understand their identities, and how they reply to the stereotypes against Native Americans through their artworks.

[1] “Mouth of Yellow Stone, Upper Missouri, 1832,” Letters and Notes on the Manners, Customs and Conditions of the North American Indians, (London and New York: Wiley and Putnam, 1841), pp. 14-16.

[2] Philip J. Deloria, Playing Indian (New Heaven and London: Yale University, 1998), pp. 104-127.