Indian Summer
Artist: Wendy Red Star (American, Crow, born 1981)
Date: 2006
Dimensions:
With Border: 23 × 26 in. (58.4 × 66 cm)
Image: 21 × 24 in. (53.3 × 61 cm)
Medium: Archival pigment print on Sunset fiber rag
Classification: Photographs
Credit Line: Gift of Dr. Loren G. Lipson
Object number: 2019.13D
Label Text:Wendy Red Star explains, “I work across disciplines to explore the intersections of Native American ideologies and colonialist structures, both historically and in contemporary society.” Her work is informed by her experience growing up on the Apsáalooke (Crow) Nation in Montana, as she confronts stereotypes about Native Americans while deploying symbols drawn from powwow and reservation culture.
In each of four highly staged and choreographed photographs in the Four Seasons series Red Star, dressed in traditional Crow garb, inserts herself into a faux seasonal landscape decorated with materials such as plastic flora and fauna and cardboard cutouts of animals. The visual references range from the once widely popular diorama displays in natural history and anthropological museums to panoramic images of the Western landscape commercially produced in the 1970s. She draws attention to mainstream American culture’s tendency to create one-dimensional narratives and stereotypes in relationship to Native American experiences, past and present. Utilizing imagery that is at once familiar and absurd, Four Seasons poses critical questions about the complexity underlying Native American identities and agency over representation.
For Indian Summer, rather than depicting the summer, Red Star leans into a questionable colloquial term referring to a period of unseasonably warm temperatures in the fall. There is no clear origin of this term and opinions vary about its use, but it points to the broader issues around certain normalized language that is disrespectful if not harmful to Native Americans.
Part of series of four photographs representing the seasons (the Museum owns the full series), Indian Summer depicts Red Star wearing a traditional elk-tooth dress and surrounded by cheap cut-outs and plastic flowers. The scene ridicules dioramas found in some natural history museums, which situate American Indians alongside static studies of flora and fauna. Her work purposely challenges what it means to be “authentic” and imbues vibrant color and imagery to recontextualize Native Americans, satirizing and rejecting 19th-century caricatures. Red Star often includes herself as the subject to assert control over her representation and to be closer to her work.
In each of four highly staged and choreographed photographs in the Four Seasons series Red Star, dressed in traditional Crow garb, inserts herself into a faux seasonal landscape decorated with materials such as plastic flora and fauna and cardboard cutouts of animals. The visual references range from the once widely popular diorama displays in natural history and anthropological museums to panoramic images of the Western landscape commercially produced in the 1970s. She draws attention to mainstream American culture’s tendency to create one-dimensional narratives and stereotypes in relationship to Native American experiences, past and present. Utilizing imagery that is at once familiar and absurd, Four Seasons poses critical questions about the complexity underlying Native American identities and agency over representation.
For Indian Summer, rather than depicting the summer, Red Star leans into a questionable colloquial term referring to a period of unseasonably warm temperatures in the fall. There is no clear origin of this term and opinions vary about its use, but it points to the broader issues around certain normalized language that is disrespectful if not harmful to Native Americans.
Part of series of four photographs representing the seasons (the Museum owns the full series), Indian Summer depicts Red Star wearing a traditional elk-tooth dress and surrounded by cheap cut-outs and plastic flowers. The scene ridicules dioramas found in some natural history museums, which situate American Indians alongside static studies of flora and fauna. Her work purposely challenges what it means to be “authentic” and imbues vibrant color and imagery to recontextualize Native Americans, satirizing and rejecting 19th-century caricatures. Red Star often includes herself as the subject to assert control over her representation and to be closer to her work.
Not on view