Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital (original) (raw)

ENGAGING WITH INDIGENOUS ART AESTHETICALLY

Introduction to Philosophy: Aesthetic Theory and Practice, 2021

Historically, artworks created by Indigenous peoples have been treated by Western, nonIndigenous artists and art critics as “primitive art” and belonging to ethnographic museums rather than in art galleries. This chapter traces how Indigenous arts have come to be reevaluated as arts and explores how the artforms of Indigenous peoples may be appreciated while recognising that these artforms are often created in artistic traditions quite different from those associated with the Western institution of fine arts. These traditions may not separate art from everyday life or ceremony and may involve quite different assumptions about the metaphysical nature of representation and the nature of beauty. Finally, it explores important ways to understand and appreciate the dynamic developments of Indigenous art, beyond the idea that “traditional” means without change.

2021d. Hampson, J. & Weaver, R. Indigenous art in new contexts: inspiration or appropriation?

Rozwadowski, A. & Hampson, J. (eds), Visual Culture, Heritage and Identity: Using Rock Art to Reconnect Past and Present., 2021

In many countries, cultural and socio-political identity is shaped, manipulated, presented, and challenged through rock art. Both on and off the rocks, Indigenous pictographs (paintings) and petroglyphs (engravings) are powerful things in themselves, and powerful tools. Drawing from twenty years of fieldwork in southern Africa, northern Australia, and North America, this chapter focuses on re-contextualised and appropriated rock art images in commercial settings, in new art works, and as integral components of political symbols. Concepts of reproduction, agency, and affect are addressed through archaeological, anthropological, and visual heritage lenses. Specific case studies include the commodification and re-contextualisation of Kokopelli and Thunderbird motifs in the USA; First Nation images in Canada; San paintings and engravings in South Africa; and Aboriginal art in Australia.

The Virtual Platform for Indigenous Art: An Indigenous-led Digital Strategy

Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, 2022

Over the past decade, a multitude of digital platforms engaging with Indigenous collections of ancestral belongings have been developed for the public in an effort to reconsider and reconceptualize notions of access and Indigenous ownership in virtual space. An initiative in partnership with the Onsite Gallery, the Virtual Platform for Indigenous Art (VPIA) is a newly developed resource that originates from Dr. Gerald McMaster’s Entangled Gaze Project at the Wapatah Centre for Indigenous Visual Knowledge, OCAD University in Toronto, Canada. VPIA is a strategic digital platform that brings together a specific dataset of Indigenous artworks and cultural belongings that portray European and Asian newcomers to Turtle Island, drawn from global museum collections. The platform’s innovative approach to collections is grounded in a dual record format, where visitors are invited to create a Community-Member profile and contribute knowledge and information to artwork pages that consist of a p...

The Contemporary Moment In Indigenous Art: Global Events and Sociopolitical Critiques

Many Visions, Many Versions: Art from Indigenous Communities in India, 2017

This chapter discusses the works of contemporary indigenous artists in India hailing from four communities (the Warli tribe from Maharashtra, the Pardhan-Gond tribe from Madhya Pradesh, the Mithila folk artists from Bihar and the Chitrakar folk artists from West Bengal). It examines how these artists negotiate with concepts of tradition and contemporaneity through works that explore the urban, that tackle global themes and reflect upon contemporary concerns. The artists discussed herein often engage with these subjects by portraying a contemporary event, be it a natural disaster, a terrorist attack or a disease with global ramifications (e.g. AIDS) but equally, they do so by tackling sociopolitical issues within their communities (including feminist issues such as female foeticide). In the latter vein, they effectively adopt the position of artivists. Within this discussion, care has been taken to keep Arjun Appadurai's observation in mind, i.e. that modernity today is “irregularly self-conscious and unevenly experienced", which -- it may be argued -- applies to an understanding of contemporaneity within the Indian context.

The Inevitable Collision between Politics and Indigenous Art

In the past thirty years we have seen a revolution in the history and politics of Australian indigenous art. Since the late 1960s perceptions of indigenous art have progressed from quaint disinterest to international excitement and the creation of a multi-million dollar industry. From a tiny 1.7 percent of the Australian population, Aborigines make-up at least 25 percent and probably around 50 percent of working visual artists as well as creating more than half the total value of Australian visual fine art and dominating the export market. Australia-wide the Aboriginal art industry is estimated to make in excess of 200millionayearandtobegrowingat10percentayear.AboriginalartistsintheNorthernTerritoryarethelargestproducersintheindustry.Theirworkhasanestimatedvalueof200 million a year and to be growing at 10 per cent a year. Aboriginal artists in the Northern Territory are the largest producers in the industry. Their work has an estimated value of 200millionayearandtobegrowingat10percentayear.AboriginalartistsintheNorthernTerritoryarethelargestproducersintheindustry.Theirworkhasanestimatedvalueof110 million annually. Unfortunately, the practitioners and custodians of the art work itself continue to be marginalized and exploited to such an extent that less than one percent of the millions generated by their work is returned to them or their communities. Further, the intense international interest created by indigenous art rarely translates into an appreciation of the enormous historical injustices that continue to have a destructive effect on indigenous peoples throughout Australia. The whole world it seems is excited by indigenous art of Australia. The same whole world simultaneously demonstrates total disinterest in the reality of the present day indigenous social, political and economic condition. That such appreciation of art and indifference to suffering can reside together is a contradiction that shall be examined in a small way in this essay. Through an examination of a few significant moments in the recent history of indigenous Australia I shall illustrate the struggle by indigenous artists to assert their self-determination, challenge exploitation at the same time as altering the cultural and political landscape of Australia.