Borders and Boundaries
"Borders & Boundaries: The Blurred Edges of Decolonisation" is a traveling exhibition curated by Robert Peters (Belfast, Northern Ireland) and Bobby C. Martin (West Siloam Springs, USA)
This exhibition explores artistic responses that engage with assimilation and/or appropriation of cultural influences, from a collection of artists based in North America, Northern Ireland and beyond. Colonial legacies and the recent groundswell of “decolonization” reactions to those legacies are key themes that these artists were asked to consider.
Assimilation and appropriation have been and continue to be important and often fractious concepts for Native peoples. Native artists confront and respond to these ideas in their work all the time. The current hot topic among many contemporary Native and First Nations artists is “decolonization,” a term fraught with meaning but yet hard to define exactly. What does that look like to artists outside North America, especially in a location such as Belfast, with its own very different colonization experience?
Responses are rooted in the friction and heat caused by border/boundary interaction, whether historical or contemporary. What shared intercultural experiences do we have along these blurred edges? Where do they overlap? What was assimilated? How can we use these shared stories and histories to create some great art?
My response was a series of images reflecting on contemporary cultural influences on traditions. I was inspired by the Navajo story about a divine gambler or gambling-god, named Noqoìlpi, meaning He-who-wins-men.
