With President Donald Trump advancing approval of the Keystone XL and North Dakota Pipelines, creating discussion and awareness of the issue is imperative to many activists and artists including Merritt Johnson.
Johnson held a lecture on campus Jan. 24 featuring her work as a Native American artist which accompanied her exhibition, “This is a Creation Story,” at the Phebe Conley Art Gallery.
The art on display uses a variety of different mediums to discuss and convey a multitude of different ideas, including communal connectivity, cultural appropriation and the importance of land conservation and appreciation.
Many of her artworks and projects, including some featured in the Conley Art Gallery, focus on the people protesting the North Dakota Access Pipeline.
A featured work, “Prayer Mask,” is a dedication to the Oceti Sakowin Camp and the others at Standing Rock in North Dakota protesting the pipeline. It shows a modified gas mask with an added respirator which would have been used by protesters during prayer to avoid being affected by tear gas.
While many of her works can be seen through a political lens, interpretation is ultimately up to the viewer.
“What people get out of my work is really more about who they are, what they come from and what their context is than it is about me,” Johnson said. “I want people to get whatever they are going to get.”
While Johnson is at the forefront of the exhibition, many of the works are collaborations with other artists who have different artistic capabilities.
Cannupa Hanska Luger, one of Johnson’s collaborators, will come to Fresno State on March 27 to create an outdoor sculpture commissioned by the Center for Creativity and the Arts. Luger will work on the project through April 9 with students.
The collaborations allow for a mixture of artforms to create art that is interactive or includes multimedia.
“Land Phone” is a piece that features soil from Fresno shovelled onto a plastic tarp to form a small mound. Under the dirt is tin can with a string attached to another tin can set on a chair. Viewers are encouraged to pick up the other tin can telephone in order to listen to the local land.
Johnson’s work is a contemporary take on Native American art. Many of the themes in her work are influenced by her background, but are not necessary traditional.
Jazmine Miller, a fifth-year graphic design major and Native American student, found interest in the contemporary discussions formed by Johnson’s art.
“I personally am somewhat involved with my culture and a lot of the traditional gatherings and powwows and whatnot — you see things that are traditional,” Miller said. “You don’t see things that are contemporary taking on such an active sense of what is going on with the world, so I thought it was really interesting and insightful to other native cultures.”
Other students saw the importance that the artwork held in relation to the current political climate.
“This is art history in the making,” said Meghan Cartier, an art history graduate student. “This is brand new work coming out of a very current political situation so I think we are very fortunate people to have it.”
“This is a Creation Story” by Merritt Johnson and The Unnamed Collective is on display through Jan. 27.
