OKLAHOMA CITY — The Soul Is a Wanderer, the 2023 Oklahoma Contemporary ArtNow biennial, emerged from a poem. Tulsa-based curator Lindsay Aveilhé envisioned the exhibition as a call-and-response with the poem “A Map to the Next World” by 2019–2022 US Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (Muscogee Nation) that would center personal and communal feelings toward the complex land that is Oklahoma and its surroundings. So although this exhibition is an opportunity for artists to tell their stories and address topics such as ancestry and sacred relationships with the natural world, it is also a chance for visitors to learn about Oklahoma.
The first work viewers encounter in the exhibition is a video, “A Map to the Next World” (2023), by filmmaker Sterlin Harjo (Seminole Nation of Oklahoma/Muscogee), best known for his television series Reservation Dogs. Reflecting on the land, the filmmaker recorded Joy Harjo (no relation) walking on her property while reading part of her poem. It is the first time he produced a film to exhibit in a contemporary art museum setting since, as he told me, “museums are the place where Indians go to die.”
The land is also a palpable presence in Ruth Borum-Loveland’s series Soil Studies, which resonates with Harjo’s verse: “You will see red cliffs. They are the heart, contained the ladder.” Borum-Loveland created grid paintings in brown tones with tempera made from soil and rocks she’s collected. Natural pigments derived from the Oklahoma land also appear in Yatika Starr Fields’s (Osage/Cherokee/Muscogee) large canvas, bearing the phrase “Whose Kicks?” The artist made the white pigment with crushed mussel shells found in rivers and lakes and named after Wilma Pearl Mankiller, the first female Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation. Fields’s work is a critical response to pop culture representations of the iconic Route 66, which passes through the land of more than 25 tribal nations, from the song “(Get Your Kicks On) Route 66” to the work of artist Ed Ruscha (who had a large retrospective at OK Contemporary in 2021).
One of the show’s highlights is Ashanti Chaplin’s video installation including an obelisk made with different tones of clay she collected in the remaining 13 historic Black towns in Oklahoma. She intended to make a “monument and nonument” to these towns and the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre and stated the departure point as a line in an automatic poem she wrote: “I feel the answer in the dirt.” She explained, “Soil is so complex in Oklahoma and I wanted to pay reverence and respect. First it was Indian territory then home of almost 50 black towns before it was a state.” Chaplin, like others in the show, was awarded the 2021–2023 Tulsa Artists Fellowship. Her return to Oklahoma involved the need to connect with her roots, home, and soul of a place.
Molly Kaderka’s two massive and laborious wall paintings are also highlights. The artist revisited traditional ways of understandings and depicting the landscape and the ancient technique of handmade marble paper for the works. Like many of the artists, she took direct inspiration from Harjo’s poem, in the lines: “Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end. You must make your own plan.” Kaderka sees this idea manifesting as a circular form, since its shape has no origin or end. She explained, “I reimagine the traditional format of the landscape by removing linear and atmospheric perspective — the meeting of earth and sky at a distant horizon — from the images while still maintaining the recognizable elements of earth and sky.” Kaderka’s paintings are complemented by works from Elspeth Schutze at the center of the gallery: massive blue sculptures that explore the idea of the vertical landscape but could also be umbilical cords that reach from the earth to the sky.
One of the show’s most striking pieces is Nathan Young’s (Delaware Tribe of Lenape Indians) video in which he imagines an account of first contact, delivered in Plains Indian Sign Language (PISL) and subtitled in the broken English associated with Hollywood caricatures of Native American people. He noted that the PISL was used in the past to communicate between the different tribes across the plains. Moira Redcorn’s (Osage Nation/Caddo descent) painting “Ma^zha^ tseka Ma^thi^ (Moving to a New Country)” (2022) is also based on language and storytelling, depicting the Osage people traveling from Kansas to Oklahoma in 1872 and the layout of their villages. She stated, “In the first layer before painting everything else I went through all the clans. At the end, constellations of stars relate to the clans that are no longer visible.” Her painting includes texts in English and in Osage language and orthography it expresses the “Rituals of a Peaceful Day,” a mantra she started repeating every day during the pandemic.
The theme of Oklahoma as a source of inspiration for artists runs through the entire show. Aveilhé’s priority was to display the strength of the artwork being produced in the state. She told me, “I am deeply invested in investigating the art being produced in my home state and what it says about existence in Oklahoma, the region, and the country. Our citizens are still actively reckoning with the mistakes of the past.”
The Soul Is a Wanderer continues at Oklahoma Contemporary (11 Northwest 11th Street, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) through January 15. The exhibition was curated by Lindsay Aveilhé.
