Snap lines, a basket in a fish bowl and a chairlift control panel
Three artists use contemporary art to examine the West
By HANS IBOLD
Express Staff Writer
In a few weeks, the nation’s eminent American studies scholars will
converge here for the Sun Valley Center for the Arts’ Western Issues Conference,
which promises to be a groundbreaking dialogue on the American West. That dialogue
kickstarts today at the Center with an exhibit of three internationally known
artists—Ron Jude, Karen Kosasa and Joe Feddersen—who explore the West through
the lens of contemporary art.
Most people have their own, private conception of the West. For some
it’s about conquest; for others it’s about subjugation; for some it’s about
ancient wilderness and blissful isolation; for others, it’s about new construction
and disruptive population growth.
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Jude explores these contradictory notions of the West in color
photography. Jude, raised in nearby McCall, titles his series of photographs "45th
Parallel" to denote the location of McCall halfway between the equator and the North
Pole. The images in his series explore the oppositions, the tug-of-war, between the old
West and the new West.
Most of the images contrast the natural with the artificial or
constructed. In "New Home (With View)" the eye is drawn to a stunning mountain
view, but the scene is revealed through a reflection cast in the sliding glass doors of a
modern house.
Jude received his M.F.A. from Louisiana State University. He teaches art
at Ithaca College in Ithaca, N.Y.
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Feddersen’s conception of the West is steeped in Native American
history. A member of the Colville Confederate Tribes of northern Washington state,
Feddersen mixes contemporary art practice with the traditional art of basket weaving.
To Feddersen, the basket is a symbolic vessel that holds the stories and
memories of Native Americans and becomes an arena for exchange and contemplation.
"Baskets brings stories with them and have the power to bring these
stories together," Feddersen said in an interview.
Some of the baskets in Feddersen’s collection, titled
"Interweaving Narratives," focus on those stories and address specific societal
issues, such as prejudicial stereotypes, AIDS and cultural survival.
One piece, titled "Fishbowl," is a basket labeled with the names
of 500 recognized Native American tribes. The basket is placed inside a fishbowl and is
obscured by the glass and by the words etched on the glass. To glimpse the basket, you
must look through words like "Skin," "Half-breed," "Drunken
Indian" and "Noble Savage."
"The fishbowl draws attention to the gaze of the viewer,"
Feddersen said of the piece. "You look through the verbiage and that makes you aware
of how you’re looking."
In other baskets, Feddersen shies away from societal issues and focuses
just on the beauty of the basket and its formal qualities—on volume, texture, color
and pattern.
Feddersen received his M.F.A from the University of Wisconsin and
currently teaches art at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.
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In her spectacular installation—"A Colonizing
Aesthetic?"—Kosasa asks unsettling questions about the West.
"My work raises questions about what it means to have a homeland when
we’re building homes on former Native American territories," she said in an
interview.
A third-generation Japanese-American born in Hawaii, Kosasa said she was
awakened to issues of colonialization because of Hawaiian sovereignty issues.
"Americans have a difficult time seeing Native Americans as a
colonialized people," Kosasa said. "Settler colonialism is something that’s
invisible. But most of our homes are really on someone’s stolen property."
Kosasa uses common building materials, such as doors, blue chalk and snap
lines, to question what makes a place a home, what is gained and what is lost and who is
displaced.
The installation, while political, has a seductive beauty. The sky-blue
hue of the chalk, the white, pristine backgrounds, the doll house figurines and the
meticulously folded origami houses are alluring.
"The work is intentionally cute and sweet," Kosasa said.
"The visual is beautiful, but the history of social relations that it reveals will
confuse our pleasure."
Indeed, an origami house is folded with a paper map of the former Native
American territories in Idaho; doll house furniture is buried in blue chalk; architectural
blueprints are footnoted with words like "Canceled," "Void" and
"Terra Nullious." Terra nullious, which means devoid of people, was how settlers
often described what was in fact Native American territory, according to Kosasa.
Kosasa said her work reflects her own search to find a meaningful home in
what is a "colonial empire."
"I feel very privileged to live in the United States, but I wonder
how it can be a democracy and at the same time a colonial empire," she said.
She does not see herself as innocent.
"Even my work as an artist supports and perpetuates a colonial
culture and a colonizing vision, regardless of how well intentioned and sensitive I may
think I am," she said.
Kosasa is currently exploring that notion in her doctoral dissertation at
the University of Rochester. She received her M.F.A. from the University of Hawaii. She
has been teaching at Boise State University since 1998.
The exhibit, which provides the visual component of the multidisciplinary
program on Western issues, runs at the Sun Valley Center through July 8. For more
information, call the Center at 726-9491.
