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https://www.mutualart.com/Artist/Da-Ka-Xeen-Mehner/A1F0FA95BC4FE44C

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New FB just for Art.

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Perhaps the best way to think about “Unsettled,” the ambitious fall exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, is from a planetary perspective. As a

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https://hyperallergic.com/165121/a-traditional-native-practice-given-modern-form/

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2014 Bridge Initiative for the Native Arts

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Da-ka-xeen Mehner found in photographic archives images of a curious character that strangely enough carried a phonetic variation of his name. Through these old photographs, he investigates how the story of the Tlingit people was told in visual history. He reinterprets it, creating a link between the past, of how the story of his people was told and the present and of how he chooses to recount it today. His images reveal ideas of truth and of fiction as existing side-by-side. Like Scott Benesiinaabandan, his work addresses the need of the human brain to construct a narrative to make sense of the world we live in. In his series Psychometry, Benesiinaabandan refers to a psychic technique traditionally used by many indigenous people by which one can “read” history via the energy locked into physical objects and spaces. It is a practice of indigenous storytelling that empowers individuals to be sensitive to their environment.

https://artmur.com/en/exhibitions/2014-exhibitions/storytelling/

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https://museums.alaska.gov/online_exhibits/mehner_statement.html

Da-Ka-Xeen Mehner's Artist Statement on Self-Constructions

This body of work comes from growing up as a cross-cultural man in Alaska and my search for a definition of what it is to be a Native American today. I Culturally identify myself as Tlingit and American Hippy.

In going through the museum archives online, I stumbled across a description of an image of a Tlingit man named Da-yuk-hene, which is almost certainly a phonetic variation of my name, Da-ka-xeen. This launched me on an examination of photographic visual history. This image was taken by Case and Draper in Juneau, Alaska in 1906. As I studied our visual history and writings on Native Americans, I realized that it is an outsider view of my culture that I am left with. The Case and Draper images are a perfect example of the constructed identity of Native-ness through the lens of the “other”. I feel a need to deconstruct the images of the past. Reinterpreting the image, I reconstruct the pose but with the tools I use on a daily basis. The camera I had received from my Uncle, and the adze I had made for myself and wearing the jacket my mother, had given me for my wedding day. In each image I change the text to reflect my presence in the reinterpreted image.

By mirroring this image, I attempt to reflect both the truth and fiction of this history. This mirrored format is derived from the bilateral form-line design structure commonly found in carved screens. What is fact and what is false in our photographic history taken by others is vague. They exist side by side and for me, reflecting and reconstructing these images helps me identify both. By reversing the archival image, I attempt to reverse the history constructed about Native peoples.

In my continuing examination of identity, I looked to my own C.I.B. card. The CIB card is a Certificate of Indian Blood which is issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Anyone that wants to be recognized by the U.S. as a Native American has to have a CIB to identify what percentage of “Indian” they are. To be federally recognized, you must have at least ¼ Indian Blood. I’m 7/16ths Alaska Native, and the card goes on to break my Native identity into smaller categories, to 3/16th Indian (which should read Tlingit) and ¼ Tsimpshian (which should read Nisga’a).

I have a birthmark on my chin that makes my goatee grow in white on one side. For years I’ve been cutting my beard and saving the trimmings. I’ve often contemplated about how my birthmark is a visual representation of my cultural heritage, and use it in the artwork.

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https://ubcsrishtiproject.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/da-ka-xeen-and-hybridity/

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Exhibition: ‘This Is Not A Silent Movie: Four Contemporary Alaska Native Artists’ at Craft Contemporary, Los Angeles

Exhibition dates: 26th May – 8th September 2013

Curator: Dr Julie Decker, Chief Curator at the Anchorage Museum

Da-ka-xeen Mehner (Tlingit/N’ishga – American) Finding My Song Weapons 2012

Another interesting exhibition that this archive likes promoting, this time about mixed-race identity.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

. Many thankx to The Craft & Folk Art Museum for allowing me to publish the art work in the posting. Please click on the images for a larger version of the art.

Da-ka-xeen Mehner (Tlingit/N’ishga – American) Finding My Song Weapons (detail) 2012

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WENDY RED STAR’S WILD WEST & CONGRESS OF ROUGH RIDERS OF THE WORLD Bumbershoot 2014 - Fisher Pavilion August 30th - September 1st, 2014

It’s live, it’s wild, it’s the real Wild West. Featuring eleven of the top Native American and First Nations artists and performers, plus 100 horses, buffalo and longhorn steers. Come delight in seeing the most cutting edge contemporary Native American art and artists

The intention of Wendy Red Star’s Wild West And Congress of Rough Riders of The World is to showcase contemporary Native American art and artist through their eyes and perspective. Since Seattle Center was originally built for the 1962 World’s Fair, it brought to mind the complicated history of World Fairs, expositions, and the famous Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in regard to indigenous peoples. In these venues, Native peoples were publicly exhibited, as a main attraction and entertainment for millions. They were usually presented in so-called “natural” or “primitive” state, in dioramas, or even in cages. They were enthusiastically paraded as lower on the scale of evolutionary progress, and represented the counterbalance to dominate Western European civilization.  On behalf of my great grandparents who participated in Buffalo Bill’s West, my grandparents who participated in or watched the St. Louis World’s Fair (1904) and the Chicago World’s Fair (1933), I want to produce my own Wild West show. Not in the literal sense, but in the sense that the participants (the Rough Riders of the World: Native American contemporary artists) will be allowed to take back ownership of Native American representations. Native American artists will have a chance to produce, present and disseminate their culture and own nativeness. The artists’ works included in this exhibition demonstrate a thriving and diverse spectrum of Native American identity in the 21st century. They are the rough riders who shatter many of the stereotypical notions placed upon Native Americans. Join curator and artist Wendy Red Star for this exciting exhibition at Bumbershoot 2014. Red Star is an artist living and working in Portland, Oregon. Red Star has an MFA from UCLA and has exhibited both nationally and internationally. *Poster designed by: Demian Diné Yazhi’ _____________________________________________.

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Perhaps the best way to think about “Unsettled,” the ambitious fall exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art, is from a planetary perspective. As a