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A site-specific installation by Charlene Teterspresented by
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Magnífico is pleased to team up with SITE Santa Fe to present a site-specific installation by New Mexico artist Charlene Teters called Route 66 Revisited: It Was Only an Indian. Teters, a member of the Spokane Nation, will transform the front section of the gallery with her installation, which explores some of the Indian realities of Route 66. Films about her work will be shown ongoing throughout the exhibition in the rear portion of the gallery. "SITE Santa Fe is extremely proud to be supporting Charlene Teters' project for Magnífico," says Louis Grachos, director and curator of SITE Santa Fe. "Charlene is also a participating artist in our Third International Biennial: Looking for a Place. Her work is always inspiring and it often reflects human history and human rights in an important way." | ||
| Charlene Teters says, "This installation takes a look at the darker side of romantic Route 66 as it passes through Indian Country. In towns like Albuquerque and Gallup the development of roadside tourism and businesses are historically counterpointed by starker realities of the Indian people touched by Route 66. Route 66 was a boundary, an artery, an indelible mark upon the land which came to represent America's sense of mobile harmony and national unity, bringing the west into the national mind. It brought exploitation to Indian Country in the form of bars, pawn shops, skid row and the idea that the Indian is a tourist attraction, a national novelty. Route 66 Revisited: It Was Only an Indian is a snap shot from the roadside." |  | |
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Route 66 Revisited: It Was Only an Indian is another phase of a previous exhibit by Charlene Teters, which took place at The Institute of American Indian Arts Museum in Santa Fe in 1994. Don Messec wrote, "Her work reflects her personal experience as a front-line political activist, mother, woman, a Spokane and a human being... Charlene Teters' medium is popular culture itself...She takes openly from the world around her as she experiences it and layers it as complexly as life itself...Charlene's work goes directly to the source waters of racial indoctrination - popular culture. She takes on popular culture's perception of what it is to be Indian and then, within these notions, positions what it really is to be indigenous in America... Her work exhibits the relationship of art to society and the understanding that there is no such thing as apolitical art." | |
Other information on the Web about Charlene Teters: Charlene Teters: Native American Advocate - http://www.rt66.com/teters/ "IN WHOSE HONOR? American Indian Mascots in Sports" - http://www.inwhosehonor.com/ SITE Santa Fe's Third International Biennial - http://www.sitesantafe.org/exhibitions/exhibitfr.html Sculpture Magazine article about SITE Santa Fe's Biennial - | ||
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