#Da-ka-xeen Mehner

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

[rrbondgalleries]

In the galleries: Reclaiming cultural identity

Erika Conti’s “White Look (Yu’pik Ena),” archival color printer on fabric, 2016. In “Decolonizing on watch through. (Michael Conti/GW Corcoran University of the Disciplines and Style)

There’s much more seafood epidermis in “Decolonizing Alaska” than within the common contemporary art study, but all of the components that are additional are accustomed. The-art within the atrium of the previous Corcoran Gallery (today the GW Corcoran University of the Disciplines and Style) contains insights on individual and social identification, in addition to on governmental and ecological problems. Figuratively, glaciers burn simply outside numerous of the pieces’ body.

One of the 31 allies are comparable beginners who perform their love for that property and its own civilizations, but additionally folks of native and Euro ancestry. Frequently, the designers juxtapose engineering and custom. Movie performs beneath a fish-skin display and it is estimated about the mind of the drum that is handmade. Three statues that were abstract have now been designed out-of antlers, and antlers have now been covered in a page the artifact has partially deformed.

Sonya Kelliher Combs’s “Remnant (Moose Antler),” fat plastic, moose antler, caribou hair, 2016, on watch at GW Corcoran University of the Disciplines and Style. (Sonya Kelliher Combs/GW Corcoran University of the Disciplines and Style)

The media installation that drum and includes movie is Da-ka- reaction was directed by xeen Mehner’s to a brave sculpture of explorer Cook, who for that British overhead stated a bit of Alaska in 1778. Michael responds to a different kind of annexation: It spots a photograph in the memorial, pushing about the glass together with her fingers, of a lady -design diorama of the household that is local.

Additional comebacks towards its own results and the Europeans’ appearance are far more individual, and many switch on booze’s results. Mom Nordlum constructed a variety-like face of her sibling, used after an alcoholic mom overlooked him, out-of alcohol bottle lids. Carved sculpture remembers conquering alcohol dependency; “decolonizing is for me personally ” she creates, an internal reckoning.

Although a lot of of the elements are particularly Alaskan, gambits and the creative designs obtain mainly in the globe of the colonizers. Aged Master pictures and Euro spiritual symbols supply the design for works for example Linda “St. Katherine ” a Madonna, of Karluk -and- by which mother is just a shaman scene is just a seal puppy. Extricating Alaska from its self-styled discoverers that are is unbelievable. Creatively, it’s merely difficult.

From movie of “1 Orange Dahlias” efficiency in Ny in 2015 outside Trump Structure. (Estefani Mercedes/VisArts at Rockville)

There’s plenty in “Questioning Energy at ” which includes four personal exhibits on overlapping styles of movie. The moderate fits the topics, the majority of that are grist for wire that is current -information communiqués. However the many instant functions are Esteban del Valle’s satirical drawing-pictures, which depict furious older males in red caps that read “Make America Excellent Again.”

“1, ” Estefani item, 000 Dahlias, chronicles both September 2015 artist’s performance. Answering Jesse Trump’s assaults on Asian immigrants, Mercedes introduced dahlias (Mexico’s nationwide blossom) to Trump Structure. There have been way too many flowers for that artist and gleeful reactions were drawn by her failure to provide them from right wing sites. However the clutter was deliberate, a theatre-of-the ridiculous second made to emphasize Web commentators’ tendency and basic rhetoric for judgments. Some internet-commentators assumed when actually she’s National that Mercedes is undocumented and Asian -created and of lineage.

Two of the exhibits tackle stereotyping of Africanamerican males that are youthful. Shané E. Gooding’s “To Observe or to Not See” is just a three-display movie item that makes a speciality of four topics, interweaving nearly-however pictures with documentary video of the men’s careers (which are usually creative) as well as their lifestyles. “gods within the gaps” is just a number of combined-press sketching-pictures of teenagers in reduced and sweatshirts – slung – trousers that are exposing. Their brains are absent or concealed, plus some seem vaguely threatening. The nuisance is a obviously, of notion.

Esteban “Freedom on watch at VisArts, polymer on fabric, from Need,” 2017. (Esteban del Valle/VisArts at Rockville)

Esteban “Unsettled, the biggest display was partially impressed from the Detroit native’s participation in his 2011 work for mayor of this town. In an inferior gallery whose function is all-in shades-of grey, a movie of the functionality item functions conversation based on messages by Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin-Luther King Jr. the result is not even close to somber, plus one of the weather is just a type of the leading end-of a 1963 Ford Universe.

Nearby Valle is currently displaying big, strongly tinted images of Trump followers, including one -enhancement supermarket. (The item is entitled “Build the Wall.”) The performer, who today lives in Brooklyn, also lampoons youthful generous gentrifiers in vignettes such as for example “Jacob Lawrence in a Harlem Restaurant: The Truly Amazing Migration.” Alongside the overdue Africanamerican artist who portrayed his people’s pursuit of independence is definitely an oversize espresso beverage capped with whipped cream. It’s upper’s real history -middle class white opportunity in a frappucino that is single.

Estefani Mercedes: 1000 Orange Dahlias and Shané E. Gooding: To Determine or to Not Observe On watch through March 19. Antoine Williams: gods within the spaces and Esteban del Valle: Unsettled On watch through March 26. 155, visArts at Rockville, Rockville. 301-315-8200. .

Pictures on watch at Transformer, by Long. (Marissa Extended/Transformer)

Chandi Kelley & Marissa Long

“Disappearing Work, archival printing that is ”, on view. (Chandi Kelley/Transformer)

“Luminiferous’ name Marissa Transformer and Aether photographers Kelley display, refers through atmosphere to a discredited 19th century idea of how lighting goes. The title that is traditional fits the pictures. High-contrast, mostly-black-and- and frequently spooky, the images stimulate Victorian seances reveries and shows.

The neighborhood pictures that are artists’ are combined together, that will be likely, since suitable that is they’re in both feel and design. As the shows in many cases are a severe bright, the backdrops are mostly-black. Colour is occasionally used by Kelley, however it is often as weak whilst the natural shade round the fringe of the water in just like the white appears to scar the dark, additionally, it seems to incinerate another shades.

Long’s reported niche may be the website, which can be a screen a reflection or perhaps a eye peering via a small starting within an ivory layer. Kelley is willing to present items that are organic, a lizard whether a covering or perhaps a coyote head. Regardless of the topic, the target isn’t to record the planet because it prevails, but to look beyond and within. “Luminiferous Aether” tips the attention in a bet to free your brain.

Luminiferous Aether: Chandi Kelly & Marissa Lengthy On watch through March 18 at Transformer, 1404 R St. NW. 202-483-1102. .

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from galleries http://www.rrbondgalleries.com/in-the-galleries-reclaiming-cultural-identity/

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If you live in Anchorage, Alaska  check it out 

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Finding My Song Da-ka-xeen Mehner

Photos taken at Craft and Folk Art Museum’s exhibit “This is Not a Silent Movie”   September 7, 2013

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Da-ka-xeen Mehner on his Reinterpretation series:

"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. Case and Draper in Juneau, Alaska took that image 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 adz 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." [~]

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https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artist/da-ka-xeen-mehner

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New FB just for Art.

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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.

[dakaxeen]

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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Finding My Song at the Anchorage Museum

By

 Jean Bundy

 -

October 1, 2012

It was approaching the third week of heavy winds and rain outside the Anchorage Museum as I strolled through their canary yellow lobby on my way to “Finding My Song.” Artist Da-ka-xeen Mehner has combined his Native and European heritages to produce a show packed with color, texture and fun along with a poignant message. It’s clear Mehner understands Tlingit craft and twenty-first century Eurocentric Conceptualism.

Raised in Alaska’s Tlingit and Caucasian cultures, each of which has been dominant at times and thus left their anthropological marks, both good and bad, Mehner now teaches Native Arts at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He holds degrees from the University of New Mexico, The Institute of American Indian Arts as well as the University of Alaska.

The show is divided into three sections but the museum-goer will find all parts connect as the exhibition is about preserving a Tlingit culture that finds itself cohabiting in the white man’s world.  However, the viewer will find no remorse in this show.  Through his art, Mehner reminds his audience to think about the past while enjoying contemporary Native creativity as he freely mixes in Eurocentric genres, offering up old narratives freshly retold.Double Pointed Daggers and Soap Bar. Photo by Jean Bundy.

In the first section, I found myself encircled by double-pointed daggers, evoking those originally made for warfare. Mehner’s extra-large daggers, made from rusted metal, appeared to sink, shrink and rise again as my eyes circulated and landed on every dagger point.  Mehner told me simple household words like “thank you” are painted faintly on the shafts. Upon further examination, I found a few, sometimes the only Tlingit words a family today might have picked up.

Twenty-first century art-speak invites viewers to put forth their own thoughts about a piece, often ignoring the creator’s ideas.  I thought of Stonehenge and envisioned being surrounded by evil-doers.  Then again, maybe the figures, whoop daggers, were playing some sort of vertical hide and seek.   Using one culture to reach out and save another might be one of the themes of this show.

The three sections are separated by two partitions shaped like the front of a clan house, now giant video screens. One screen has a large still image of Mehner with a bar of laundry soap shoved into his mouth. Here, Mehner’s self-portrait is much like those of artist Catharine Opie, with her in-your-face oversized photography that exposes every flaw of a person’s anatomy.  Mehner references the horrible experience his grandmother remembered. Native children were punished  when speaking their native tongue in missionary schools that insisted English be spoken or else.

When I spoke on the phone to Mehner, he said this soap bar image is one of the most talked about themes and graciously welcomed viewers who told their own stories about the Fels Naphtha product. As a child I would spend summers at my grandparent’s home on Martha’s Vineyard, routinely playing in poison ivy. I could still smell that yellow ochre bar being rubbed on my skin to diminish itching.

The second screen holds a looping video showing contemporary Native dancing against traditional Tlingit red and black patterning. The hazy video of reds, blacks and yellows looked as if it was engulfed by flames.  Perhaps this blurred image   shows how older generations are being replaced just as old Tlingit traditions are being updated for contemporary celebrations. Between the clan house screens on the gallery floor is another looping video of a drum being played.  A drum stick occasionally appears and recedes but makes no sound. Clan House with Dancers. Photo by Jean Bundy.

Like a Carl Andre checkerboard, found on most contemporary museum floors, the viewer is presented with a choice, to walk on the image or obey Eurocentric bureaucracy and walk around the piece. Again the museum-goer may superimpose emotions or absorb Mehner’s possible theme about a silent drum as a trope for lost Tlingit culture. Visitors can attempt to stomp out the drum-video or culture but are not in control of its on/off switch.  The head of the drum remains throughout in sharp focus with its red and black mythical imagery–proof of cultural survival.

The third and perhaps most daunting section is a wall piece with eighteen skin drums in alternating rows of threes and twos. Three dimensional self-portraits of Mehner emerge from the drum heads that light up and dim in concert with the artist’s voice performing a chant that permeates all three sections.  Mehner says the song is about the Killer Whale Clan migrating to Chilkat or Sitka after finding themselves either over or under a glacier. Multiple Mehner heads emerging from drums makes him appear almost mystical. This shaman-esque Mehner contrasts with the somewhat commercial Catharine Opie-esque Mehner: two ways cultures have approached portraiture, both used by the artist to get out the Tlingit message.Mehner Emerging from Drum Head. Photo by Jean Bundy.

Mehner’s splicing of his cultures might  be obvious to anyone who has taken  an  art history class where students learn how to dialogue with the artist who left his trace on the art piece. Themes about who is the “self” versus who is the “other” when confronting a work and its message are intriguing to art aficionados but most likely remain invisible to those passing through a gallery on their way to the café or gift shop.  I watched as late summer tourists wandered through the exhibition, bewilderment on their faces. I attempted to engage an Australian family about similarities in indigenous cultures while their two teens whined.

Mehner’s cultural dual citizenship keeps the viewer guessing who is the real “self” and “other,” much like moving pieces on a game board. “Finding My Song” had no brochures to take away for later contemplation and the wall placard offered   minimal explanations, not even the tale of the Killer Whale Clan. One of the highlights of the museum’s Chipperfield wing is the Smithsonian research center where antique masks and mukluks mix with monitors showing contemporary Native lifestyles.

Although the Smithsonian exhibits are arranged in a Eurocentric way similar to many natural history museums, it would have been interesting to suggest to visitors strolling through Mehner’s show that they might visit the museum’s permanent Native collections and compare different ways of respectfully keeping cultures alive. Imagine the conversations and dialogues that could ensue as visitors rolled their luggage through the security at the airport.

Finding My Song by Da-Ka-xeen Mehner is on view at the Anchorage Museum Sept 7 – Nov 11, 2012

[dakaxeen]

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.

[dakaxeen]

Fellowship Artist

Fellowship: Conversations (2015)

Cultural Affiliation: Tlingit/Nisga’a

Mehner was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, where he currently resides. He graduated from the Institute of American Indian Arts with an Associate in Arts in 1992, the University of New Mexico with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2003, and the University of Alaska—Fairbanks with a Master for Fine Arts in Native Arts in 2007. In 2013, he was the recipient of a Career Opportunity Grant from the Alaska State Council on the Arts; in 2014, the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation Fellowship; and in 2015, a U.S.A. Rasmuson Fellowship in Traditional Arts. Currently, he is the department chair and associate professor at the University of Alaska—Fairbanks’ Native Art Center. Via photographic images, video, performance pieces, and sculpture, Mehner depicts his personal experiences and history as an urban Indian. Expressing his ideas mainly through self-portraits, Mehner seeks to convey his own perspective on identity.

[dakaxeen]

When Da-ka-xeen Mehner’s grandmother spoke Tlingit in school as a young girl, her teachers would wash her mouth out with soap to “encourage” her to speak English.

This is just one of the family stories that Mehner drew upon to create the multimedia installations featured in his first Anchorage Museum solo exhibition. “Finding My Song,” on view Sept. 7 through Nov. 11, takes a personal look at the retention and reclamation of language.

Born in Fairbanks to a Tlingit/N’ishga mother and a Caucasian father, Da-ka-xeen Mehner (pronounced DAY-ka-kheen Mayner – the “x” sounds like a guttural “h”) was raised in two different environments: One as an urban Native in Anchorage and the other as a rural hippie near Fairbanks living without electricity, running water or a phone. From these perspectives, he studies the constructs of Native American identity.

Much of the work in this exhibition expresses Mehner’s belief that culturetranscends generations through music — in this case, the drum. Mehner was strongly influenced by an experience he shared with his young son while at Celebration, a biennial festival of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian tribal members in Juneau. His son was transfixed by the drumming he experienced at Celebration, and so he began to drum. He drummed so passionately that soon his drum had to be reskinned.

The centerpiece of Mehner’s exhibition is a large structure resembling a longhouse, the traditional dwelling of many North American indigenous peoples. Bars ofsoap are housed inside, representing the soap that washed out the mouths ofNative schoolchildren, including his grandmother. Drums provide a surface for film projections, representing his son’s reclamation of language. Daggers protect what has been regained.