This quarter we have the rare opportunity to engage directly with the artist who is the subject of our formal research paper. We will be attending Nicholas Galanin's Artist Talk at Campbell Hall, and he will also come and speak to our class before his A&L Lecture. Additionally, we will be seeing his artwork on our trip to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). This is very special that we are able to meet him in-person, hear him give an Artist Talk, and ask see his work in-person.
Artist Bio:
Nicholas Galanin (b. 1979) Lingít/Unangax̂/ Multi-Disciplinary Artist
Nicholas Galanin’s work is rooted in his perspective as an Indigenous man connected to the land and culture he belongs to. His work is embedded with incisive observation and critical thinking to advocate social and environmental justice. Galanin’s work expands and refocuses the intersections of culture, centering Indigeneity through concept, form, image, and sound.
His works are vessels for knowledge, culture and technology – inherently political, generous, unflinching, insistent and poetic.
Deftly engaging with past, present and future, Galanin celebrates the beauty, knowledge and resilience of Indigenous people. His work counters assimilation; insisting on differences as strengths. Rejecting binaries and categorization, Galanin works to envision, build and support Indigenous sovereignty.
Over the past two decades his work has ranged across media, materials and processes; in which Galanin has splintered tourist industry replica carvings into pieces, the rearranged pieces evidence the damage of commodification to culture through photos, objects, and video. His practice includes customary cultural objects, petroglyphs in sidewalks and coastal rock, masks cut from anthropological texts, and a taxidermied polar bear melting into a pool of it’s own fur.
In 2020 Galanin excavated the shape of the shadow of the Capt. James Cooke statue in Hyde Park for the Biennale of Sydney, examining the effects of colonization on land, critiquing anthropological bias, and ultimately suggesting the burial of the statue and others like it. In 2021 he created a replica of the Hollywood sign for the Desert X Biennial in Palm Springs CA, which reads INDIAN LAND, directly advocating for and supporting the Land back and real rent initiatives. Galanin holds a BFA from London Guildhall University in Jewellery Design and an MFA in Indigenous Visual Arts from Massey University in New Zealand, prior to which he apprenticed with master carvers and jewelers in his community; he is represented by Peter Blum Gallery in New York, his music is released by Sub Pop Records in Seattle. Galanin lives and works with his family on Lingít Aani, Sitka, Alaska.
Nicholas Galanin's Artist Statement:
Culture is rooted in connection to land; like land, culture cannot be contained. I am inspired by generations of Lingít & Unangax̂ creative production and knowledge connected to the land I belong to.
From this perspective I engage across cultures with contemporary conditions.
My process of creation is a constant pursuit of freedom and vision for the present and future. Using Indigenous and non-Indigenous technologies and materials I resist romanticization, categorization and limitation. I use my work to explore adaptation, resilience, survival, active cultural amnesia, dream, memory, cultural resurgence, connection to and disconnection from the land.
Nicholas Galanin's Website: https://galan.in/
Nicholas Galanin's Instagram: @nicholasgalanin
