Module 4, Post 1
I’ve been reading Patricia Vervoort’s essay “Edward S. Curtis’ “Representations”: Then and Now” and was surprised by how a number of aboriginal artists use his work for self-representation. She is not the only theorist who has looked at this approach that seems to border on anathema for some aboriginals. In many ways taking and using those pictures lessens their mimetic power, so that the fictitious “savage” is now able to work outside the confines set by the dominant society. These artists are reclaiming a commodified object and turning it into something they can use for self-representation:
http://blog.ocad.ca/wordpress/drpt2b07-fw2011-01/files/2012/04/Poitras4.jpg
In some ways this is similar to the End of the Trail…
Some first-nations love it, others loathe it. The question has to be asked…are these artists working within a “post-modern” (i.e. Western) framework of deconstructing the “noble savage” and if so are they being helpful or a pest to their own people, especially the elders who may not approve of this work?