Addrian Stimson and Canadian Art-Free-Samples-Myassignmenthelp

Question: Describe one of artwork of Adrian Stimpson. Answer: The essay discusses the biography of a Canadian artist Adrian Stimson who represents the Blackfoot community of Alberta. His works are unique as they carry the traditional essence. The essay analyses the artists background, his messages through artworks, the medium he used and his strategies to convey his ideas. Buffalo Boy is inspired by Buffalo Bill of the wild west and becomes a trickster symbol that unreveals and redefines the colonial stereotypes through hilarity and satire. This performing art has achieved huge popularity in North America and became the regular occurrence at Burning Man festival of Nevada. This essay discusses various aspects associated with the artists much celebrated performing art, Buffalo Boy. In this work, people come across a buffalo bill with a Blackfoot burlesque dancer. The Buffalo Boy is a gender blending persona which reflects upon the colonial stereotypes as well as identities (canadianart.ca). To the artist it is not only an identity of the aboriginal Blackfoot people in Canada but a gender identity. Buffalo Boy is the mixture of human and buffalo, it is also a mixture of man and woman. It has been the epitome of the artists identity questioning art. Artists biography: Adrian Stimson was raised inSault Ste. Marie, Ontario and a member of the Siksika Nation Blackfoot Reserve in southern Alberta. Stimson had studied in Alberta college of Art and Design and received Bachelor of Fine Arts (canadianart.ca). He completed his Master of Fine Arts from the university of Saskatchewan. He is considered as an interdisciplinary artist and his works are exhibited nationally as well as internationally. He is an educator, instructor in University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon and curator of the Mendel Art Gallery. In 2010 Stimson was selected to visit to Afghanistan and represented the Canadian Forces Artists program. In Regina he arranged an exhibition named Holding Our Breath at Neutral Ground in 2011. The British Museum has acquired two of his paintings for its indigenous collection of North America. Medium and material used: Performing art: Stimsons performing art emphasises the identity construction. They are the representation of his own history, the history of the Blackfoots. In the Buffalo Boy, he used his body as the medium (aboriginalart.vancouverartinthesixties.com). He wore fishnet stockings, corset like an aboriginal woman. There was a cowboy hat decorated with birds feather. He used blue body paint to decorate his eyes and wore a pearls necklace on his neck. His hair tied in braid like a Blackfoot woman. Stick on his hand and a buffalo hide on his back, Stimson turns the performance playfully parodic as well as gut-wrenching. This work was enacted as testimonies of the treatments of the aboriginal black foots in Canada by the colonizers (Guyot 105). Chief concepts and message of Adrian Stimsons works: The primary agenda of Adrian Stimsons art works is to criticise the stereotypes of the indigenous people of Canada. His symbols are representative of his existence and identity of a Blackfoot. The Bison that recur in every piece of his artwork is a symbol of destruction of the traditional life of the aboriginals. It is a central object of his Blackfoot being. The Bison also represents cultural regeneration and survival on the one hand and disappearance of its history on the other. It is the symbol of icon as well as food source to the natives. To him, it is the part of his contemporary life. Therefore, the Buffalo Boy is the own reflection of the artist (Lycett, Stephen and James 25). He has played back and forth between the identities of male and female. In the Buffalo Boy, the artist can be found wearing fishnet stockings, corset, buffalo G-string and pearls necklace. Buffalo Boys campy shenanigans and transformations directly challenge the colonial history which is the story of ab original inferiority including disappearance (Bear 519). His photography, performances and installations always present a shifted value system that supports the colonialism and marginalizes the aborigines by terming them as uncivilized. The binary contrasts of dirty and clean, civilized and savage, poor and wealthy, power and labour class, excess and limited, man and woman, homosexuality and heterosexuality that are chiefly structure our current world are upturned in his works (Oetelaar 104). He destabilizes those value systems with his campy humour, irony and wit and at the same time creates the images of mourning which marks the trauma of the history of colonialism that the indigenous people wear in their communities. Stimsons Buffalo Boy deals with the intergenerational trauma that originates from hundred years of loss, abuse and institutionalization. The British government put the aboriginal children into lifeless prisonlike institutions for changing them into good Christians. Their land was snatched away from them so as their culture and beliefs. The traditions and ethnicity of the native people were beaten out from their soul and replenished with Euro-Canadianism and Christianity. In his Silencing Witness Stimson describes the silencing method of the colonialists. The native children went to residential schools where their Blackfoot language was strictly prohibited. They were made European forcibly by punishing for the slightest display of indigenous behaviour and tradition. This practice therefore made the Blackfoot generation to communicate volumes without uttering a word. His message exposes the desperate nature of suffering yet demonstrate the common resilience. Strategies: The days in residential schools taught him to express his ideas and thoughts through looks and gestures, also the art of observing and listening. This silence was used by the artist not only to reduce the noise but also for speeding up the resolution (Annamma et al 26). Stimsons earnest seeking for chronicling his pain found the way through art. His closed pain of being heathen and savage have been expressed in his every work. He decolonises, exorcises history and finally gets healed through his artworks. Therefore, it can be concluded that Stimsons work carries his Blackfoot identity. It is the true representative of the suffering of his community as well as their pride. Through his works Stimson has successfully presented his indigenous identity to the world. References: Aboriginalart.vancouverartinthesixties.com."AboriginalArt/ Vancouver Art In The Sixties."Aboriginalart.Vancouverartinthesixties.Com, https://aboriginalart.vancouverartinthesixties.com/ (2017). Annamma, Subini Ancy, David Connor, and Beth Ferri. "Dis/ability critical race studies (DisCrit): Theorizing at the intersections of race and dis/ability."Race Ethnicity and Education16.1 (2013): 1-31. Bear, Leroy Little. "Traditional knowledge and humanities: A perspective by a Blackfoot."Journal of Chinese philosophy39.4 (2012): 518-527. Canadianart.ca. "Adrian Stimson | Canadian Art."Canadian Art, https://canadianart.ca/artists/adrian-stimson/ (2017). Guyot, Sylvain. "The Mise en Art of Mountain Areas: Territorial Actors, Processes and Transformations. An Introduction."Journal of Alpine Research| Revue de gographie alpine105-2 (2017). Lycett, Stephen J., and James D. Keyser. "Beyond Oral History: A Nineteenth Century Blackfoot Warriors Biographic Robe in Comparative and Chronological Context."International Journal of Historical Archaeology(2017): 1-29. Oetelaar, Gerald A. "Worldviews and humananimal relations: Critical perspectives on bisonhuman relations among the Euro-Canadians and Blackfoot."Critique of Anthropology34.1 (2014): 94-112.