It's always a thrill to welcome exhibiting artists on the air, sharing insights about their work and intention. This week, we had Cannupa Hanska Luger stop by the station with curator Alex Gregory to discuss the latest installation at the Amarillo Museum of Art. You're invited to the opening reception of Reunion on Friday, September 16th at 7p CT, There will be an artist talk at 7:30p, so be sure to catch that. This lively exhibit features everything from performance to cast-glass buffalo skulls to a film showcasing the artist's high-concept, modern designs of traditional regalia.
Click the link at the top of this page to hear our full interview; Cannupa shares more about the show, his heritage as a member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold (Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota), his process and materials, and why his work addressing the obliteration of the American Bison has particular relevance in the Texas Panhandle.
MORE ABOUT THE EXHIBITION (from AMoA): Reunion is a solo exhibition at the Amarillo Museum of Art presented by multi-disciplinary artist Cannupa Hanska Luger. Utilizing performance, video, ceramics and monumental sculptural installation to tell a story about planetary interconnectivity, Luger urgently implores audiences towards relational repair—with each other, with more-than-human relatives and with the land. Traveling both backwards through history and forwards into the future, the work challenges and empowers humans to develop deeper kinship with the natural world.
In the new large-scale installation Transmutation, calcium carbonate and bone-black pigments cascade from lifesize glass Buffalo skulls acknowledging the annihilation of the American Bison, a species lost a hundred years ago and with lasting effects in the 21st century.
This exhibition also premiers the new regalia and video work, Midéegaadi, from Luger’s speculative fiction series, Future Ancestral Technologies. This ongoing project looks to customary practices in order to move culture forward. It actively incorporates science fiction theory, storytelling, Indigenous technologies, contemporary materials and the detritus of capitalism to present time-bending landscapes and to prototype new myths.
In addition to these new works, the artist presents recent large scale installation pieces and video works.
“With great and continuous effort separation is possible.
Every conflict that has ever occurred has been the consequence of maintaining separation.
The language of dominance is filled and filed by category. A place for everything and everything in its place.
However, the world we live in and life itself is constantly finding equilibrium.
The edges blur at every border and the transition of one thing to another becomes transient.
Nature is in flux and the form one thing takes is defined by its relationships to everything it touches.
Union is the natural order.
Reunion is inevitable.
This is but one of the many stories of reunion.
Told through a singular lens but experienced through a great and complex universe.”
— CANNUPA HANSKA LUGER
