Traditions never really die.
And “Traditions, Change & Celebration: Native Artists of the Southeast” at the McKissick Museum seeks to prove it.
The collection of contemporary examples of traditional art forms focuses on the concept of carrying native cultural heritage into the 21st century.
Through the 145 objects made by 74 different contemporary artists, 28 Native American tribes are represented from across the southeastern United States. The exhibit marks the second use of the Diverse Voices exhibition space, which was re-branded last year to preserve the cultural heritage of the southeast through folk art and storytelling, according to Edward Puchner, curator of exhibitions for McKissick Museum.
“Every year we focus on one particular community within the southeast region,” Puchner said. “This year we’re focusing on Native Americans.”
Each of the exhibition’s pieces was created by contemporary artists working with either traditional media forms or their tribe’s traditions of art-making, Puchner said. There’s everything from aquaculture, quilting and textiles, dolls, basketry and pottery to more traditional regalia among more modern media like videos and sound recordings.
The contemporary spins applied to each piece either involve a traditional method practiced to create modern implements or adjust native methods to fit contemporary advances. This involves customs like native finger-weaving to make purses or using a kiln, a tool unavailable to native artists, to make traditionally designed pottery.
“[The artists] create things like masks or regalia with traditional processes, but at the same time, they’re trying to change those traditions to reflect contemporary society — new techniques that help evolve the traditions in a new form,” Puchner said.
The idea for a contemporary native exhibition came from artists involved in last year’s Diverse Voices collection, according to Puchner.
“The Diverse Voices exhibition space started last year as a survey of folk heritage award winners and national endowment for the arts winners that were in the McKissick collection,” Puchner said. “In developing that show, we acquired a number of objects by a traditional maker, Dr. Will Moreau Goins. We got talking with him about how rich the possibilities are for putting on an exhibition for contemporary traditional native arts.”
Goins serves as the CEO of Eastern Cherokee, Southern Iroquois and United Tribes of South Carolina Inc., an organization that represents the interests and culture of Cherokee and other South Carolina tribes.
“We were working with [Goins] on the previous exhibition and he said to us that there really hasn’t ever been an exhibition done on the wide range of traditional makers that are in the southeast,” Puchner said. “He knew our collection and the basketry, textiles and other 3D objects that we already had, and he said a really good exhibition could be put together based on those categories.”
Goins contributed a great deal to the collection presented in the exhibit.
“We hired him as a consultant early on and he brought us all sorts of examples,” Puchner said. “We used it as an opportunity to make acquisitions to add a good number of objects by native makers to the McKissick collection to enrich the university’s collections in this area. At first, we had about 75 objects, but he just kept bringing greater and greater examples.”
One of the main features of the museum’s latest exhibition is an animated video created by a native artist. The video begins with a native creation story before moving into the present day.
“[The video] is significant in that it’s taking traditional storytelling narratives that are closely held by native groups and he’s shifting them into a contemporary context,” Puchner said. “It mixes strong beliefs that have been held for centuries with the current state of affairs of native tribes.”
Another piece heralded by Puchner is a contemporary styled jacket with native decorations on it.
“All of the different symbols [the artist] uses on it relate to his own family history and life in general, the sun is an indicator of life and light, the round shapes have to deal with pregnant earth, the dashes are life’s journey, the triangular forms that line the edges deal with the serpent, something that goes back to his family history,” Puchner said. “They’re carrying their traditions with them wherever they go, that’s a good metaphor for the things that you see here.”