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A the wind from the big North American jets has blown over the Yorkshire hills. Professional works 38 Native Americans fill the homes of Yorkshire Sculpture Parktransforming their underground space into a world of clay and earth, fabric and metal, painting and art that speaks of land, memory, oppression and freedom through art.
Everywhere, there is ancestral knowledge, memory and tradition. It is in Navajo weaving Tyrrell Killed and Melissa Codecarved beads of Jeffrey Gibsonparadox of geometricism of Eat White Hawka large platform. They all use cultural elements to explore new ideas: Gibson’s work is about how his personality fits into his culture, White Hawk pushes for familiar elements, Cody mixes pixelated movie elements into Navajo, and more. Everyone here is taking old ways and pushing new ways.
One of the Pueblo sculptors Rose B. SimpsonCeramic figurines hold clay made by her child, one shows a figure holding a baby. Nearby, a sculpture of Simpson’s mother Roxanne Swentzell – without a doubt my favorite work in the exhibition – shows a naked woman molding herself from clay. Right now we have two generations of women, working in the arts that their people have been masters of for centuries, even millennia, honoring their past, their land, using the earth as material. It is a celebration of what makes us who we are.
It’s not all woven, leather and beaded; there are pictures, neons and videos here too. But what unites many works is the ability to endure when they are oppressed. Native Americans live on dispossessed lands, have been persecuted and exploited for hundreds of years, how can their art not reflect that injustice? This is a show full of anger and drama.
Edgar the Bird Bunch‘ signs protest against the use of the sanctuary. Yatika Starr Fields they have hung tents on the roof that were used by the protest against the Dakota Access Pipeline. Sayokla Kindness Williams It wants to return the land of the ancestors that was stolen by the sign of the beads. Virgil Ortiz commemorates the Tewa leader who led the 17th century rebellion against the Spanish with a large black ceramic mug. After years of colonialism and exploitation, there is a lot of anger and pain here. This exhibition is not only about the world and memory, but about art as a means of inspiration.
It’s hard not to see this sense of stolen colonialism through the lens of the Trump administration and its ICE raids and travel bans. This is the person who controls access to the entire country, the police that they call home but don’t. Looking around the show, you can’t help but question the freedom they have.
Not everything here is good. Some are not good at all. Gibson in particular – who represented the US at the 2024 Venice Biennale – has always been a bit too quiet and sly for me. And it is important to say that this is not a proper survey of North American art, because it is such a large topic that it can be found in only three rooms.
Among the many exhibitions of native art that have hit UK museums in recent years, this is neither the best nor the worst. But it is a moving and sometimes very beautiful picture of art from different places, which are connected by shared pain, patriotism and the belief that, in fact, more unites us than divides us.
