{"id":38246,"date":"2017-04-19T11:15:24","date_gmt":"2017-04-19T17:15:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/?p=38246"},"modified":"2025-11-10T21:13:18","modified_gmt":"2025-11-11T04:13:18","slug":"on-indian-land-denae-shanidiin-honors-the-american-indian-movement-at-mestizo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/on-indian-land-denae-shanidiin-honors-the-american-indian-movement-at-mestizo\/","title":{"rendered":"On Indian Land: Denae Shanidiin Honors the American Indian Movement at Mestizo"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nW<\/span>hat is the role of the artist: storyteller, activist, documentarian? In this time of ever-increasing globalization, complete with rising concerns about our rights and our future, the lines between roles continue to blur. As artists seek to create works that will appeal to many, they also find themselves exploring personal identities, an artistic pursuit that may lead to many paths. Denae Shanidiin is one such artist traveling along these varied paths. Through her work exploring her Native American heritage, she finds herself filling several roles of the artist. In her latest exhibit, at Mestizo this month, she is documenting a movement that began long before she was born, and that will last beyond her years. Her work helps to tell the stories of the American Indian Movement, which in turn is an integral part of the America Indian narrative, and that is a story that cannot be told without activism.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0Shanidiin began exploring her identity through work that was originally limited to her family (see a review of a 2014 exhibit\u00a0here<\/a>). \u201cI didn\u2019t grow up in my native culture at all really, other than knowing what home was, which is on the rez,\u201d she begins, sharing that her interest in native culture didn\u2019t really flourish until her adulthood. When her search took her outside her family, she found the American Indian Movement, and began to draw much of her creative inspiration from it. She found that the fight for native sovereignty is also the fight for water protection, for land protection, and that all of this comprises the fight to preserve native culture and identity.<\/h4>\n

Mestizo Gallery is known for thought provoking, confrontational exhibitions exploring issues of race, gender, sexuality and civil rights, just to name a few. Shanidiin\u2019s exhibition,\u00a0I Honor You<\/em>, is no different. She wastes no time in getting the viewer to start thinking \u2014enter the gallery and you are met with the words \u201cYOU ARE ON INDIAN LAND\u201d painted in black along the main gallery wall. The entire exhibition is a beautifully blunt portrait of the faces and words that shape the American Indian Movement. \u201cI\u2019m definitely using my photo documentary work of people and faces that I\u2019ve met. Some of them are family, and some of them are Native American activists or elders,\u201d she says referring to a wall of images, each surrounded by delicately hand scripted quotes from people within the movement, including Clyde Bellecourt, one of the founding members of the American Indian Movement in the late 1960s.<\/h4>\n
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\u201cI\u2019m also really inspired by the photo documentary work that was done during that time,\u201d she says of the early days of the American Indian Movement and the portraits of the movement\u2019s leaders. \u201cAnd then seeing them now in their old age, it shows their resilience,\u201d she remarks. \u201cWhat was going on at Standing Rock, [those leaders] were there to support that movement\u2026because they\u2019ve been through this so many times.\u201d<\/h4>\n

Shanidiin works part time as a sign painter, and the skills and aesthetics from that trade have been repurposed in this exhibition to help spread her message. Shanidiin combines inspiration from Civil Rights era protest signs with the aesthetic of her signage work to create fine art protest placards. One sign reads \u201c500 years of indigenous resistance!\u201d written in a style that wouldn\u2019t feel out of place in the produce department of your local grocery store \u2014 positioning the signs as advertisements for indigenous issues that have gone overlooked time and time again in the American political and societal conversation. \u201cIt\u2019s just a long history of people holding up signs, essentially advertising what they stand for and the issues that they care about.\u201d<\/h4>\n
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Denae Shanidiin, photo by Jared Christensen.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

This exhibition provides intellectual fuel to keep the fire burning behind this immensely important conversation. \u201cWe\u2019re at this point in time where people do intentionally want to be well meaning, and to honor native people,\u201d she says. \u201cWe\u2019re learning about the true history\u2026 We\u2019re realizing we\u2019ve been lied to\u2026 about the genocide of Native Americans.\u201d The power of art lies first and foremost in visibility. Once you see something, it stays with you and changes you. The works on display here have the power to change people\u2019s minds. When you see the messages in this gallery, it\u2019s hard not to start questioning what you think you know about the history of Native Americans.<\/h4>\n

Denae Shanidiin\u2019s I HONOR YOU is at Mestizo Institute of Culture & Arts in Salt Lake City (631 W. North Temple Suite 700) April 17 \u2013 May 12, and open for Gallery Stroll, Friday, April 21, 6-9 pm.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is the role of the artist: storyteller, activist, documentarian? In this time of ever-increasing globalization, complete with rising concerns about our rights and our future, the lines between roles continue to blur. As artists seek to create works that will appeal to many, they also find themselves […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1613,"featured_media":98414,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_piecal_is_event":false,"_piecal_start_date":"","_piecal_end_date":"","_piecal_is_allday":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,14],"tags":[1952,4362,4361],"class_list":["post-38246","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exhibition_reviews","category-visual_arts","tag-denae-shanidiin","tag-mestizo","tag-mica"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/04\/Denae-4-1.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-07 07:35:41","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1613"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38246"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":98415,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38246\/revisions\/98415"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/98414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/artistsofutah.org\/15Bytes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}