Conceptual artists address cultural taboos and challenge ethnic stereotypes

By Katie Emerick, Homer Tribune
November 12, 2008

Prejudices exist. We all know it. Interpretations occur whether fair or not and stereotypes spread through the thick waters of society.

James Luna, a Luiseno Indian born in La Jolla, Calif. and Guillermo Gomez-Pena from Mexico City have found a way to challenge cultural boundaries and question misconceptions through their art. It is their performance/installation pieces that are being brought to the Bunnell Street Art Center as the second half of the gallery’s November series engaging revolutionary projects from Native Americans that innovate what is thought of as art, history and culture in the United States.

Both Luna and Gomez-Pena will be performing a series of vignette pieces throughout the week in addition to collaborating together. Though coming from different backgrounds, there are similarities - flamboyancy for one and a dry sense of humor, enabling the artists to combine their talents into a greater performance. In fact, even in highlighting all that is dissimilar, the duo finds a shared message. Between Native Americans and Mexicans living in the United States, Luna sees a connection through issues of identity.

“There’s the matter of recognition,” he explains, “of either fulfilling or destroying stereotypical things about our culture. But people assume that ethnic people have a lot in common. Yeah, poverty,” Luna adds with a dry laugh. “There are so many differences.”

While there are many issues explored by Luna in his various works of art, a particular theme addresses the mythology of what it means to be Indian in contemporary American society.

“It’s sort of going back and looking at the stereotypes of Indians,” Luna explains. “For example, people think today that Eskimo covers all Alaskan Natives and that’s not true. We haven’t been given the opportunity to be a part of the 20th century.”

The result is through the painted illusions which society has created to categorize ethnic cultures in the U.S., there remains continued oppression.

“It kind of keeps us in a box,” Luna told the Homer Tribune. “Even as artists, I’m an Indian artist and people say, ‘oh, you do jewelry.’ Museums give us a break, and put us all in a show together, and I use my platform to address that. Don’t invite me to your ethnic show. Give me a one-man show and see my work.”

A particular performance vignette that Luna plans to perform in Homer is called the “Artifact Piece,” first shown in 1987. In the exhibit, Luna lies motionless in a bed of sand sheathed by a museum display case. On his Web site Luna writes that using his own body as the object in the piece is “to disrupt the modes of representation in museum exhibitions of native others and to claim subjectivity for the silenced voices eclipsed in these displays.”

Despite at times seemingly so, Luna contends that his work is not political. Rather it is social in that it explores issues that are personal to him.

“People have said about my work, that they can relate to it and the things I want to relate are nostalgic,” Luna says, referencing the joint performance piece he does with Gomez-Pena called “La Nostalgia.” “We’re a technological society,” Luna continues, “and don’t have time to sit down at a table and eat, to appreciate food and learn to cook instead of buying frozen food. The whole thing for us, as tribal people, is that it’s a very important thing to sit down together and eat.”

It is an element of living and community that Luna believes should be important to all people.
What makes Luna and Gomez-Pena so powerful in their art, is the ability to be approachable in dealing with concepts such as community or family that are universally relatable. In addition, they give a critical look at issues facing their own cultures that have so often been left as taboo, such as alcoholism. In his performance piece, “Uncle Jimmy,” Luna personifies a man taken from his many uncles.

“There’s a real contradiction with this character,” Luna explains. “It’s an older Indian man as I see him. Not the stoic chief that everyone thinks of. He’s in a wheel chair, missing an eye and he drinks. But he talks about what’s important to him, the past fading.”

Ultimately, Luna is a conceptual artist seeking anything through which he can tell a story that will encourage people to think outside our cultural norms. In these terms, Luna is ready to question him.

“I’m a storyteller, and I’m Native,” he says. “Does that make me a Native storyteller? Not the kind that people would assume. Then I ask myself, ‘what’s the difference?’ The pieces I’m doing, they’re contemporary. They’re more abstract and not typically Native. But taking all that stuff away, I’m sharing, just like a Native storyteller.”

James Luna and Guillermo Gomez-Pena will be presenting a series of their performance pieces in three shows, all of which will be different in some way, in addition to three free outreach activities surrounding the artists’ works.

James Luna and Guillermo Gomez-Pena
When: Activities Nov. 17-19
Performances Nov. 21 and 22
Where: Bunnell Street Arts Center
More info: For more information, contact the Bunnell St. Arts Center at 235-2662

© 2008 The Homer Tribune

Posted on November 12th, 2008 by hunwut
Filed under: Interesting, Reservations