Hayden Keene, Class of 2022
Environmental Studies and Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Graciela Iturbide, Cementerio, Juchitán, Oaxaca, 1988. Gelatin silver print. 2018.10.166
As a Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies and Environmental Studies coordinate major with a minor in Anthropology, I was excited by the prospect of including in the exhibition themes not often at the forefront of environmental discourse. I am intrigued by the tension between the sacred and the mundane, or the spiritual and the material, in the ways in which we conceptualize our environment and relate to it. Nature serves as a place of great awe and spiritual connection for many, yet simultaneously our lives are constantly entangled with the environment through material realities of resource extraction. I propose that in Cementerio, Juchitán, Oaxaca (1988), photographer Graciela Iturbide evokes a new conception of the traditional aesthetic of the environmental sublime, inspiring a feeling of awe and divinity through her framing of a mundane task. Through Iturbide's lens, carrying firewood is rendered as ritual and the cloud of swallows in the adobe tomb reveals the enduring entanglement of life and death. Imagining humans as separate from or insignificant within nature, as depicted in historical works of sublime art, no longer serves us in the era of the Anthropocene. Perhaps it is time to refigure the sublime as mundane and intimate yet imbued with a sense of mystery. For me, this image of a Zapotec woman in her environment begins to reshape and reenchant the tradition of sublime art. Additionally, I appreciate how Iturbide’s work prioritizes trust with her subjects. She established close friendships with the women of Juchitán, living in the community for multiple stints over nearly a decade. Iturbide views photography as a mutual act of regard, asserting that “it’s essential that my subjects trust me, that there is complicity.” By emphasizing trust, Iturbide’s work moves away from the historical tendency to exoticize or essentialize Indigeneity in relationship to the environment.
Zig Jackson, Indian Man on the Bus (Indian Man in San Francisco), 1994; printed 2019. Archival pigment print. 2019.52.2
Zig Jackson’s photograph, Indian Man on the Bus (1994; printed 2019), offers a humorous intervention to disrupt romanticized stereotypes of Indigeneity in North America. Jackson, an acclaimed photographer of Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara descent, rides the bus wearing a ceremonial headdress with jeans and sneakers, and the presence of the surrounding commuters adds an element of performance art to this self-portrait. He uses self-portraiture as a visual means to recover and reclaim the representation of Indigenous people in American art from a troubling history depicting violence and stereotypes. Jackson photographs himself enacting the rituals of daily life in his environment, the city, challenging our notions of what “the environment” can mean in relation to nature. Like Iturbide, Jackson’s work pushes the boundaries of what we might consider environmental art. I appreciate how Jackson and Iturbide both work within the built environment to explore representations of Indigeneity and nature through lenses that center humor and spirituality, respectively, to generate art that is visually legible yet deeply resonant.