GOCA

Esoo Tubewade Nummetu (This Land Is Ours)

Gregg Deal
September 15 - December 11, 2022
Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery, Ent Center for the Arts

ABOUT THE EXHIBITION

Gregg Deal, (Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe) is a multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and self-described "disruptor” who lives and works in southern Colorado. A major solo exhibition at the Ent Center for the Art’s Marie Walsh Sharpe Gallery site will feature new works in multiple series addressing Native identity and critiquing American society, politics, popular culture and history. Deal’s art practice incorporates lifelong interests in punk music, street art and graphic styles, comic books and speculative superhero fiction. Deal presents a new paradigm that places the perception, narratives and voices of Indigenous people at the center of modern and historic storytelling, with romantic and damaging stereotypes of culture placed upon them upended and rejected by all. In “Esoo Tubewade Nummetu (This Land Is Ours)”, Deal asserts that Native peoples and their cultures are still here and that we are all standing on the homelands of past and future Indigenous generations.

The artist states:

“In 2018 a man asked me, “What is the most important thing to Indigenous people? The land? Protecting traditions? Your language? Or your people?” I told him, “Those are all the same things.”

So much of the Western understanding of Indigenous people on the North American continent is predicated by the perception of existence and not the reality of existence. Whether the mystical Indian, the vanishing race, or the antagonist to Western progression, these ascribed identities situate Indigenous people as perpetual relics, rarely given quarter in the present, and certainly not in the future. Our likeness, personality and even culture has been created, romanticized and reproduced through film, photography, literature, consumables, and visual art. The premise of one artwork in the exhibition, titled “White People Shouldn’t Paint Indians”, is based upon the idea that our own identity has been informed by this Western gaze, and the marginalized nature of Indigenous people has prevented us from telling our own stories. Our image, wrested from our control and wielded on our behalf, has ensured that our image and our identity are manufactured in a way that negates truth and distorts truthful understandings of who we are as both historical and modern peoples. Contemporary art is one sure way to challenge these ideas, even reusing the damaging images to reimagine, challenge and reflect on hundreds of years of misinformation and misappropriation.

In a new paradigm, we must assert our identity in the face of settler colonialism and generations of romantic nationalism. As we do so, new narratives manifest themselves, challenging established spaces and hegemonies that have traditionally suppressed voices of Black, brown and Indigenous people. Such an undertaking demands that we reimagine the sound of authentic Indigenous voices, uproot the romantic notions of history, and boldly state that we are not only here, but that you are on the homelands of our people and the generations of Indigenous people in the future.”

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Gregg Deal, (Pyramid Lake Paiute Tribe) is a multi-disciplinary artist, activist, and self-described "disruptor." He shares that his work is informed by his Native identity and includes exhaustive critiques of American society, politics, popular culture and history. Through paintings, murals, performance work, filmmaking, spoken word, and more, Gregg Deal invites the viewer to confront these issues both in the present and the past tense.

In a 2018 TED Talk, Deal described his work as “honoring Indigenous experiences, challenging stereotypes, and pushing for accurate representations of Indigenous people in art.” Gregg Deal has exhibited his work at notable institutions both locally, nationally, and internationally including the Denver Art Museum, RedLine Contemporary Art Center, and The Smithsonian Institution. Deal currently lives with his family and works in Colorado.

Instagram: @gocacolospgs

Image courtesy of the artist.