For Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest coast such as Galanin (Tlingít and Unangax̂), the totem pole is a ceremonial object used to celebrate events, depict stories, and document family lineage. In I Think It Goes Like This (Gold), a seemingly Indigenous-made totem pole is covered in gold leaf but lies dismantled on the ground. Contrary to the viewers' original understanding of the object, this is not a cultural tool of memory-making and community. It is a carving by an Indonesian artist created to sell as a souvenir to tourists in Alaska. Through his intervention of destruction and reassembly to the original carving and application of gold leaf, Galanin creates dialogue about the economy of cultural appropriation while reclaiming the work as Indigenous art.

About the artist
Examining the complexities of contemporary Indigenous identity, culture, and representation, Nicholas Galanin works from his experience as a Tlingít and Unangax̂ artist. Embedding incisive observation and reflection into his oftentimes provocative work, he aims to redress the widespread misappropriation of Indigenous visual culture, the impact of colonialism, as well as collective amnesia. Galanin reclaims narrative and creative agency, while demonstrating contemporary Indigenous art as a continually evolving practice. As he describes: “My process of creation is a constant pursuit of freedom and vision for the present and future. I use my work to explore adaptation, resilience, survival, dream, memory, cultural resurgence, and connection and disconnection to the land.” Galanin unites both traditional and contemporary practices, creating a synthesis of elements in order to navigate “the politics of cultural representation.” Speaking through multiple visual, sonic, and tactile languages, his concepts determine his processes, which include sculpture, installation, photography, video, performance, and textile-based work. This contemporary practice builds upon an Indigenous artistic continuum while celebrating the culture and its people; Galanin contributes urgent criticality and vision through resonant and layered works.

https://youtu.be/9m-fy1Dp9hM

Watch a conversation between Docta and Emory's Assistant Professor of African Studies Bamba Ndiaye, captured during DDocta'sartist residency in November 2023. Access a playlist of Senegalese music created to accompany the installation.

Among the many ancient cultures that produced painted pottery, the Greeks in the Mediterranean, the Maya in Central America, and the Moche of northern Peru stand out for their terracotta vessels enlivened with narrative imagery. Representing heroic adventures, divine encounters, and legendary events, these decorated ceramics provided a dynamic means of storytelling and social engagement.

By juxtaposing Greek, Maya, and Moche traditions, this exhibition invites conversation about the ways in which three unrelated cultures visualized their society, myths, and cosmos through their pottery. Who made and used these vessels? Which stories did they depict, and why? How did artists shape these accounts? Could images convey more than words? Each vessel displayed in this exhibition is a “picture world,” full of expressive possibility.

Organized by the J. Paul Getty Museum. Curated by David Saunders and Megan E. O’Neil.

Complementing the Maya ceramics is a room within the exhibition of oil paintings made by five contemporary Maya artists from the highlands in Guatemala, to the south of where the Maya pottery in the exhibition derives. Their paintings are part of a contemporary art form developed by Maya artists in the 1930s but are in many ways connected to the creation of painted pottery, wall murals, and books by Maya artists in earlier times. They too are “picture worlds,” narrating stories about spirituality, ceremonies, ancestors, health, and government. They also comment upon the histories and futures of their communities and the larger region, including the armed conflict and genocide against Maya people in Guatemala from 1960 to 1996, and contemporary topics like immigration, human rights abuses, Indigenous rights, and celebration of Indigenous identity. The Tz’utujil and Kaqchikel Maya painters featured in the exhibition are among the more than eight million Maya people in Mexico, Guatemala, Belize, and Honduras, as well as in diaspora across the world, including in Atlanta, who speak one of approximately thirty-one Maya languages today.

On September 19, 2024, Emory College, Emory University Libraries, the Carlos Museum, and the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum will host dECOlonial Feelin, an international symposium that raises awareness of lingering coloniality in the Virgin Islands and offers a space to engage with ecological thought and anticolonial practice. Led by Emory Professor of English and Creative Writing Tiphanie Yanique, this three-day symposium uses art, poetry, archives, philosophy, storytelling, anthropology, and spiritual practice led by the Virgin Islands Studies Collective as lenses through which to engage in this meaningful work. A major component of the symposium is the opening of two exhibitions featuring the work of the internationally acclaimed artist La Vaughn Belle.

Come Ruin or Rapture, opening in the Carlos Museum’s John Howett Works on Paper Gallery on September 19, includes work from two of Belle’s series, Storm (in the time of spatial and temporal collapse) and Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental) where she uses materials from her studio that were exposed to Hurricane Maria in 2017. These repurposed materials take on new forms and express the resilience of people of African descent in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the face of both natural disasters and colonial powers. The exhibition will be on view through December 8.

The exhibition A Haunting Between Us, opening on September 19 at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, displays work from Belle’s Swarm series, which delves into the Danish colonial archives and uses photographic images from the Danish West Indies. Belle reimagines these images through a method of cutting and burning that not only changes them but utterly transforms their colonial context by removing black bodies from scenes of servitude and highlighting them as subjects of strength and perseverance. The sculpture Sovereign (How to Pull a Spear from the Throat) reminds us that rebellion and resistance was waged by the Indigenous peoples of the West Indies as well as Africans. As she says, “The haunting is a call to decolonization and the dismantling of systems that keep us fragmented.” The exhibition will be on view through December 13.

About the Artist
Through exploring the material culture of coloniality, La Vaughn Belle creates narratives from fragments and silences. Working in a variety of disciplines, her practice includes painting, installation, photography, writing, video, and public interventions. She has exhibited her work in the Caribbean, the USA, and Europe in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio (New York), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), the Museum of the African Diaspora (California), and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Denmark) with large solo exhibitions at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (South Carolina) and the National Nordic Museum (Washington). She is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies. The project was featured in over 100 media outlets around the world, including the New York Times, Politiken, VICE, the BBC, and Le Monde. Her work has also been written about in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Small Axe, and numerous journals and books. Her studio is based in the Virgin Islands.

Ndaté Yalla Mbodj, Powerful African Queen and Daughter of ‘Watalantay Nder Defeated Colonization in Senegal

Senegalese artist and social activist Docta is a pioneer of African graffiti. For more than thirty-five years, he has used the medium to create powerful visual messages that give voice to the oppressed by drawing attention to social inequities, political abuses, and local histories. In this new mural commission, created especially for Emory, Docta depicts Ndaté Yalla Mbodj (c. 1810-1860), the last Lingeer (Queen) of Waalo, one of the four Jolof kingdoms in present-day Senegal. One of the most powerful rulers of Waalo, Ndaté Yalla fought fiercely against French colonization and is regarded as a hero of Senegalese history. Represented in her distinct roles as political arbiter, warrior general, and nurturing mother, she symbolizes female empowerment and Senegalese resistance to colonial oppression.

This is the first in a series of mural installations in the Greek and Roman sculpture court designed to prompt conversations between contemporary artists and the Carlos Museum’s collections, architecture, and site. It was created with support from Emory’s Institute of African Studies and the Department of Visual Arts.

On September 19, 2024, Emory College, Emory University Libraries, the Carlos Museum, and the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum will host dECOlonial Feelin, an international symposium that raises awareness of lingering coloniality in the Virgin Islands and offers a space to engage with ecological thought and anticolonial practice. Led by Emory Professor of English and Creative Writing Tiphanie Yanique, this three-day symposium uses art, poetry, archives, philosophy, storytelling, anthropology, and spiritual practice led by the Virgin Islands Studies Collective as lenses through which to engage in this meaningful work. A major component of the symposium is the opening of two exhibitions featuring the work of the internationally acclaimed artist La Vaughn Belle.

Come Ruin or Rapture, opening in the Carlos Museum’s John Howett Works on Paper Gallery on September 19, includes work from two of Belle’s series, Storm (in the time of spatial and temporal collapse) and Storm (how to imagine the tropicalia as monumental) where she uses materials from her studio that were exposed to Hurricane Maria in 2017. These repurposed materials take on new forms and express the resilience of people of African descent in the U.S. Virgin Islands in the face of both natural disasters and colonial powers. The exhibition will be on view through December 8.

The exhibition A Haunting Between Us, opening on September 19 at the Clark Atlanta University Art Museum, displays work from Belle’s Swarm series, which delves into the Danish colonial archives and uses photographic images from the Danish West Indies. Belle reimagines these images through a method of cutting and burning that not only changes them but utterly transforms their colonial context by removing black bodies from scenes of servitude and highlighting them as subjects of strength and perseverance. The sculpture Sovereign (How to Pull a Spear from the Throat) reminds us that rebellion and resistance was waged by the Indigenous peoples of the West Indies as well as Africans. As she says, “The haunting is a call to decolonization and the dismantling of systems that keep us fragmented.” The exhibition will be on view through December 13.

About the Artist
Through exploring the material culture of coloniality, La Vaughn Belle creates narratives from fragments and silences. Working in a variety of disciplines, her practice includes painting, installation, photography, writing, video, and public interventions. She has exhibited her work in the Caribbean, the USA, and Europe in institutions such as the Museo del Barrio (New York), Casa de las Americas (Cuba), the Museum of the African Diaspora (California), and Kunsthal Charlottenborg (Denmark) with large solo exhibitions at the Halsey Institute of Contemporary Art (South Carolina) and the National Nordic Museum (Washington). She is the co-creator of I Am Queen Mary, the artist-led groundbreaking monument that confronted the Danish colonial amnesia while commemorating the legacies of resistance of the African people who were brought to the former Danish West Indies. The project was featured in over 100 media outlets around the world, including the New York Times, Politiken, VICE, the BBC, and Le Monde. Her work has also been written about in Hyperallergic, Artforum, Small Axe, and numerous journals and books. Her studio is based in the Virgin Islands.