You are now an accomplice: Collaboration in the work of Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger
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| “Each/Other” by Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger |
In Denver recently, I had a chance to take in the “Each/Other” exhibition by Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger, both Native American artists whose work - separately and together - rest on collaboration as both an operative term, as well as a point of departure for inspiration and reflection.
As part of the mission statement at the Denver Art Museum’s installation, the wish was that each piece on display would foster a sense of the scope of each person’s experience in being part of the process. This is adds several levels of depth and dimensions to the work before us. This should be a guiding principle in viewing most large-scale works; the understanding that any given piece is not merely the result of one person’s effort adds a richness to the experience of engaging with that piece.
However, this is not something that many artists tend to emphasize, despite the number of assistants big name artists (and sometimes not so big name) employ in the realization of their visions. Throughout much of history, students and guild members from the European traditions from the Renaissance on remained and remain anonymous and unknown to us. For every Da Vinci apprenticed to a Verrocchio, how many lesser students continued as masters in Leonardo’s shadow?
It wasn’t always that way, of course, and it is a logical development of historical changes that came with the era. Increasingly, though, artists are aware of the beauty of working with others to realize a singular work and Watt and Luger render this beauty concrete through works that interrogate the differences between indigenous communities and traditions and the dominant society that misunderstands/diminishes those traditions and communities and flips that misunderstanding on its head by producing works that are the distinct result of many anonymous hands. Each person makes a mark, tells a story, participates in a performance and the results are often inspiring and provocative.
“Each/Other” as a whole experience draws the viewer into a more dynamic relation with the works than might seem obvious, at first. Without Each, there is no Other, without you, there is no me. We exist for Each Other. This inherently invests the plastic objects with a felt sense of other hands sewing statements onto bandanas, flowing together with mirrored surfaces to produce a virtual river, or telling their stories on labels affixed to blankets stacked like tree trunks or totem poles. Each object is invested with a story.
There is a fluidity in each constructed work but each is directed by Watt’s or Luger’s distinct visions. Both artists imbue their work with a deep a connection to their respective tribal origins, not as artifacts but as living lineages, rivers of creation flowing through each and all.
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| Still from “River” by Cannupa Hanska Luger |
Additionally, the political component is rooted in these pieces. Luger’s work “River” documents protesters at Standing Rock walking with mirrored shields held overhead into a river-like conformation. Shot from overhead by a drone, it is poetic and a reminder that the pipeline would cripple sacred land and the flow of the life of not only the Lakota nation, but the natural world. A polluted river, a land with soil ruined by petroleum leeching into it would lay waste to the environment.
| “Trek (Pleiades)” (2014) by Marie Watt |
In Watt’s “Trek (Pleiades)”, she weaves the USS Starship Enterprise from “Star Trek” into a patterned quilt resembling a constellation (perhaps en route to or as part of the Pleiades) or as a map or topography of space. In using reclaimed wool blankets and various other sewing materials, there is an implicit acknowledgement of other hands, other lives weaving into this tapestry. In a sense, if the work (an perhaps this applies to any work) extends along one axis through space, it extends along another, perpendicular axis through time. The past becomes tactile through the materials and part of a visionary journey through the image.
Watt’s works utilize sewing circles and remind us of the tribal aspect of community in general that has been lost for the most part among our technological isolation. Specifically, it serves as a reminder that there are communities still flourishing where individuals come together to share their stories and collectively compose a new one.
“Art is a verb, not a noun. Art is a practice, it’s an activity. It is an action.” - Cannupa Hanska Luger
You don’t get much more Duchampian than this. But there is a substantial difference in the works themselves. Duchamp, one hopes, would applaud what Luger and Watt are doing. One would also hope that Duchamp would get that both artists are doing this irrespective of a prevailing idea that art is an elitist affair buttressed by wheezy, timeworn colonialism.
Throughout each work by each artist, given this foundational collaborative approach, is a dynamism that fills out one’s engagement with a participatory element. The work is not static (no piece ever really is; the idea that just because a painting or any object exists does not mean it is a mere passive artifact; there isn’t one “Guernica” - there are multitudes).
The exhibition finds its culmination in Watt and Luger’s collaborative effort, “Each/Other”, comprised of 700 bandanas produced by sewing circles in the UK and assembled as a giant wolf lounging as if guarding and embodying the various sentiments sewn onto each bandana and aware of the composite nature of its own vulpine existence. It’s a staggering work of great beauty and the simplicity of its appearance belies the complexity of work that went into it.
“You are now an accomplice. You are now a collaborator. You are now invested. That creates an empathy path. A way for us to embrace one another.” - Marie Watt and Cannupa Hanska Luger.
Unlike the deconstructivist approach of much of post-modernist works, Watt and Luger are using the creative collaborative act to include the audience. We are not merely passive witnesses to the work but elements in its continuity and further evolution. There Is a lot of heart and a lot of love in these pieces (and cheeky responses to art historical predecessors as evinced by “Companion
Species (Is this a pipe?)” by Watt and “This is not a snake” by Luger among other references). The complicity of the viewer is in the act of viewing itself. What the individual’s reaction is immaterial; even indifference (though how you could be indifferent these works is beyond me) would be an implied collaboration (though I’m not sure about being “invested”). In any case, the degree of response, the level of engagement would say more about the respondent than the work itself, perhaps.
The works on view in Denver range from playful to moving in the extreme. I recommend joining me in jumping down the rabbit hole to learn more about both artists and even oneself. Following the end of its run in Denver on August 22, Each/Other will visit the Michael C. Carlos Museum in Atlanta from September 25 to December 12, 2021, and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem from January 29 to May 8, 2022.
Explore more:
Denver Art Museum: “Each/Other”
More references:
https://www.sttlmnt.org/projects/each-other
https://www.denverartmuseum.org/en/blog/contribute-blanket-story-new-artwork-by-marie-watt
https://www.thisiscolossal.com/2021/05/marie-watt-cannupa-hanska-luger/
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/miranda/la-et-cam-cannupa-hanska-luger-20170112-story.html
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