August:
Museum of Contemporary Native Art,
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Steven J. Yazzie’s work is about land, as a place of personal reflection, a framework for Indigenous cultural relevance, and a point of reference to changing politics related to urbanization.
For the exhibition “The Mountain”, Yazzie recognizes place as an entity with multidimensional interpretations and has become an essential location for his creative investigations, as a source of history, knowledge and power. The new installation will include: sculpture, painting, digital photographic prints, and a multichannel video to build experiential entry points into the various narratives associated with the ‘mountain’. One notable component in the exhibition comprises of a three-channel video ^ (Looking For Tsosido), which explores the narrative of process and journey. Tsosido, a word with unknown meaning, was Yazzie’s father’s nickname when he was a child. This gap or mystery in his family history has become one point of departure in the larger story in the work. Tsosido therefore functions as a point of personal reference, an evolving polymorphous mythology, containing framework for building a new relationship with personal history in the context of a culturally significant place and the subjectivity of transient action.
