INSIGHT: Resistnace

Intersectionality

Interview by Atiba T. Edwards and FGR

AE: How did the selection to Whitney’s Biennial come about? What was your reaction when you got the call? NG: I had several conversations with Ru and Jane about my practice, my work and future projects. I was thrilled to get the call but also concerned about the institutions ability to care for our ideas, our community, our work in regards to Warren Kanders and Safariland.

AE: Where did the catalyst for creating American Prayer Rug come from? NG: From the constant oppressive amnesia in America, amnesia that purposefully chooses not to acknowledge our histories, the violence that continues from building and following through with these histories. The devouring of culture while ignoring communities that create said culture. The continual drumming of violence through media, separating and dehumanizing our communities, which comfortably sets the scene for violence, violence we see taking place in form of white terrorism. America is the catalyst.

How does showing in spaces that may not always feel safe fit into your art path? All institutions are problematic. Indigenous erasure is real all the way down to the land that many of these institutions are built upon. If we do not engage and stand ground with presence to share our experiences, works, dreams and ideas to the world then this genocide swallows our community.

What do you see as your role in participating and showing your work in these institutions? My work has so much capacity to do jobs of necessity, while allowing for viewers to feel as if they have challenged something in there own perspectives, this is more effective than shoving knowledge or experience down a throat. If you feel accused in these conversations surrounding the work that is telling of your position in the political or social conversation.

Most museums have problematic ties to Indigenous communities based on not only how objects in the collections have been acquired via theft etc. but also on the damaging belief deeply rooted in western thought that everything Indigenous, land, body, knowledge and visual language is something that can be appropriated, consumed and fed upon. The myth that anthropology and western gaze is supreme, this falls inline with Manifest Destiny. This also happens in anthropology where our elders’ knowledge is homogenized, only considered valid after anthropologic process. We have agency.

I have no conflicts bringing a perspective that has been purposefully ignored or skewed to these spaces, it is necessity.

What role does art have in resisting wrongs and communicating rights? My experience and connection to art has many layers, from healing and strength in my Indigenous community to connection to land and place. In my Indigenous culture art was not a word, though we lived amongst so many important objects created by our communities. Art documents and leads conversation to new understandings, it expands and offers the viewer space to grow and change. Art is a tool of sovereignty which offers many politically powerless people a higher power, one that connects generations.

Do you feel you have a responsibility to see that through? Yes, we come from strong cultural histories that have been met with literal genocide written into this nations constitution. Our existence is resistance, our health, knowledge and love is resistance.

Our connection to place, to culture and community is resistance. Given the white washing of history often softened and fed through school books and settler myth, why would one trust our important histories and stories to be told with such abuse and negligence?

How does your work right or eradicate the settlers gaze? I don’t have a map or playbook for the deeply rooted counterfeit belief of white supremacy, though it’s experienced in major and micro forms within our communities and institutions, this is generational, it is embedded in the fabric that built this nation, these borders.

Offering work in safe spaces which allow for one to see their own positions in the conversation with more clarity is one form of engagement. Equally important in this conversation is the continued work I do in my community with apprentices, building up our community with connection to our cultural richness of subsistence living, art etc.

With trauma, you address and move past it but not let it hold you back. How do you continue with that mentality in a world where trauma feels never ending as more of ones past is surfaced and even attempted to be rewritten? This is a real important conversation, working with heavy conversations in a way that allows for growth and engagement, progress is part of the power in being an artist. We can create works which hold space in history, presence and future. We can create dialogue that allows for engagement while not bearing the load of this conversation daily. We are often demanded to explain ourselves, our ideas, knowledge, work, emotional work, to teach and give or prove. All of that demand is tiring and taxing, mental health is important, it is also important for me to focus on other aspects of my practice that build and uplift, that connect to land, to love and to future generations.

Complete the phrase “art is...” Everything, everywhere.

Art connects us to each other, to the unknown.