The Artist's Eye: Melissa Magnuson on 'It's not about the land', Hoxton Arches, Nov
It began with a chance encounter in the summer of 2015. Wildfires were consuming millions of acres in the Rocky Mountains of Montana and Idaho. Loaded my camera gear and followed cryptic instructions from a man at the Clark Fork Café in search of the firefighters’ base camp. The smoke was thick for miles in every direction making it noticeably harder to breathe, obscuring the mountains and morphing the sun into a strange red orb. After miles of driving higher into the mountains on dirt roads, I finally came to a large clearing where a makeshift village appeared; trucks, cars, dozens of tents – large ones for popup kitchens and small ones for sleeping, rows of portable toilets, and exhausted people standing, walking, talking, working, wearing the dirt of their day or week. Rigs, the firefighters’ equivalent of military Humvees from all over the western United States parked haphazardly.
I was told my timing was good because the ‘elite’ firefighting teams would be rolling in soon. A Mad Max type vehicle appeared emblazoned with a large Geronimo Hotshots logo and fifteen men unloaded, all Apache Indians from the reservation community of San Carlos Arizona. They were tired, dirty and hungry but willing to talk and have their photos taken as they prepared for a meal before setting up tents for the night. The Apache firefighters wore the same expressions Edward S. Curtis captured when he took photos of their great grandfathers. But that was over a hundred years ago. Looking back now, I see myself as they must have seen me on that summer evening as another white person, asking to take photographs, wanting information about their lives and culture.
After my encounter with the firefighters, I built relationships with the San Carlos Apache community over the next year. My interest in the connection between the people and their tribal land in Arizona resonated with previous work, where the socio-political background of particular locations somewhat removed from outside influences allows the landscape to become a dynamic process, and subject identities are formed in an amalgamation process. I am interested in peeling back the layers of that process, and collaborating with inhabitants to introduce historic references with contemporary visuals.
A recent land trade between the US Forest Service and Rio Tinto Mining Corporation paved the way for Rio Tinto (headquartered in London) to build the largest copper mine in North America on land held sacred but not owned by Apache tribe members resulting in a protest movement by Apache activists. Spending time on location shooting photography, video and gathering material, I saw the impact of post colonialism through the activism, tribal rituals and day to day existence of people living on the “rez” in San Carlos. The American “Manifest Destiny” movement in the late 19th century left traces of the attempted cultural genocide by the US Government. In a remote Arizona desert location, the Apache community balances life between tribal traditions and a changing world. it’s not about the land attempts to represent the Apache people and their connection to the land without “othering” them. Working beyond my subject position was a daily intention during the process, and collaborating with the people in San Carlos reduced the potential of exoticizing them.
it’s not about the land does not presuppose a homogenous postcolonial victim and invites the viewer to consider the geopolitical realities of the San Carlos Apache community. Renegotiating the contradictory myths and what might be called history of the people, landscape and politics without a particular agenda is encouraged. The challenge is to allow the complexity of the material shape a point of view.
Utilizing large and medium format photography, video and in situ installations that include remnants of the desert community landscape, it’s not about the land not only explores the complexities of the Apaches’ relationship with the land but also my own position as an outsider.
it’s not about the land opens with a party 3 November 2016, 6:00-9:00 pm. Open daily 4 – 7 November, 2016 10:00 am – 7:00 pm. There will be an artist talk from 3:00 – 4:00 pm Saturday 5 November, 2016. All welcome.
it’s not about the land
Melissa Magnuson
Hoxton Arches
Arch 402 | Cremer Street | London | E2 8HD
Opening night: 6 – 9 pm 3 November, 2016
Opening Hours: 10 – 7 pm 4 – 7 November, 2016
Artist Talk 3 - 4 pm 5 November, 2016
