Joe Harjo (b.1973 Oklahoma City, OK) is a multidisciplinary artist from the Muscogee Creek Nation of Oklahoma and currently works and teaches in San Antonio, TX. He holds a BFA in Visual Arts from the University of Central Oklahoma and an MFA from the University of Texas at San Antonio.
His work uncovers the lack of visibility of Native culture, lived experience, and identity in America due to both the absence of proper representation in mainstream culture and the undermining of Native belief systems. He confronts the misrepresentation and appropriation of Native culture and identity, initiating a call for change.
Recent exhibitions include: High Visibility: On Location in Rural America and Indian Country, Plains Art Museum, Fargo, ND: The Only Certain Way, Sala Diaz, San Antonio, TX; Texas, We’re Listening, Brownsville Museum of Art, Brownsville, TX; We’re Still Here: Native American Artists Then and Now, McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX; Monarchs: Brown and Native Contemporary Artists in the Path of the Butterfly, Blue Star Contemporary, San Antonio, TX, Reimagining the Third Space, KCAI Crossroads Gallery: Center for Contemporary Practice, Kansas City, Missouri, re/thinking photography: Conceptual Photography from Texas, FotoFest, Houston, Texas.
Harjo is a board member of the Muscogee Arts Association, a nonprofit organization that advocates for living Muscogee artists. He is a 2020-2021 Harpo Foundation Native American Residency Fellow and a recipient of the 2020-2021 Blue Star Contemporary Berlin Residency hosted by Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Germany. He is the Chair of Photography at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio, TX.
Katie Willingham (KW): We were at Vermont Studio Center together while you were working on your series of Indian Performance Prints, and I remember talking to you about how they formed a kind of poem through their titles. Can you describe how this series unfolded and how language and performance come together here?
Joe Harjo (JH): Initially, these performance prints were a marker of my presence, performing day-to-day tasks, rituals, and routines that many other individuals would also perform. This functioned as a way to show our commonalities and more so to work against the erasure of Native American presence – to show I’m here; I’m not invisible. From there, I began to think more about how people are treated on this land – land that was once for Native people – and how the communities of BIPOC who now inhabit this land and give us their presence are treated. I started to think of identity as a weapon used against us. I considered how I am bearing witness to these killings and injustices.
Language came into play when I considered what objects have been used as weapons against myself as a Native American and against BIPOC communities at large. From scissors to bibles, the American flag to a bag of Skittles, all these objects have been weaponized to justify genocide, assimilation, and now police brutality. Performing the act of holding these objects marks them and reveals them as weapons. It also serves as a marker of time and presence in the ongoing fight for civil rights.
KW: I’m curious – when you have shown this work, what do you think about in terms of ordering it in the space? Do you think about the prints forming a narrative in some way?
JH: With exhibiting the “Indian Holding a Weapon” series, I’ve usually started with the print “Indian Holding a Weapon: Gun” because it is the object most recognized as a weapon. It is an easy springing-off point for viewers to consider the other objects as weapons – or a point of comparison at least. When you consider the literal translation of the gun as a weapon, you can start working in the less tangible weapons, like self-doubt, breath, faith, or less considered weapons like the American flag, a history book, and scissors.
KW: Your Instagram hashtag project #ThisIsNotAnIndian uses language to a very different effect. It explores labels and the relationship between language and imagery, i.e., what happens when a word and an image have formed a very rigid relationship, especially when that word is about identity. Can you talk about challenging language with visuals here?
JH: It’s a mix of perceived identity, working with stereotypes and misperceptions and challenging them with language that dispels those visuals. The stereotypical headdresses that are in many of the images are found by going about everyday life. So I superimpose whatever mundane task I was doing over the imagery existing out there for all to see. My presence challenges the way we expect to see Native Americans. For instance, in “Indian Ordering a Pizza,” I’ve placed my body where it would seem as though I am wearing this headdress that was randomly painted on a sign at a local pizza shop. These popular plains-style war bonnet headdresses are specific to certain tribes and are important to their narratives. Often misrepresented and used as appropriation, their meaning has nothing to do with me, ordering pizza, or the pizza shop itself.
KW: How has this project transformed over time by being documented in new ways and places over the years? How do you see it going forward?
JH: The Instagram project has slowed down, especially given COVID; however, I plan to pick it back up once on residency in Berlin. Being in a different country will be interesting. I wonder if I will spot any appropriated imagery or misrepresentations of Native traditions or culture.
KW: Your series The Only Certain Way takes its title from the 16th-century explorer/conqueror/colonizer Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who, in reference to religious conversion and assimilation, said Indians “must be won by kindness, the only certain way.” In exploring how this “kindness” was weaponized, tell us why you chose to keep his language present as the title. How do you invite your viewers to see his words through a different lens?
JH: I used his words as the title of this series because I believe it still applies today. The colonizer approach then was conversion or death. In this moment of destruction and genocide, Cabeza de Vaca sort of figured out a trick – or a more efficient way – to get to the same result of conversion. He used kindness as a weapon to gain trust and still result in killing off languages, religions, spiritual practices, and traditions that made up much of Native identity. In the present, you can’t so overtly strip people of their customs, but you can still use the veil of kindness to rewrite our narratives, appropriate our imagery, and take claim to our identities.
KW: In these projects or others, can you talk a little bit about artists or writers who have inspired you to explore language and imagery in the ways you do?
JH: At the forefront of my inspiration is Joy Harjo, who so eloquently illustrates through words the Native American experience, then and now. A visual artist who always strikes me is Glenn Ligon, whose use of one-word neon signs speaks volumes in their presence. Hock E. Aye VI Edgar Heap of Birds’ blunt and bold use of words and signage in his series “Surviving Active Shooter Custer” showcases present-day Native experiences and those during the time of colonization. Jeffery Gibson’s use of familiar song titles and working that familiar language into the discussion of Native identity is brilliant. Kendrick Lamar’s lyrics give way to a very visual understanding of a lived experience. Though there are so many others, for sure, James Baldwin is a writer whose honesty has always given me hope for change.
KW: What’s next, Joe? What are you reading these days, if that is something you’re continuing to draw from? And what’s on the horizon for you?
JH: My latest work is a series of performance prints titled “Indian with COVID,” which details my experience of contracting and recovering from COVID-19. It will be a part of a larger group of work focusing on the idea of the “American Dream” and what that idea has cost so many Native and BIPOC communities through manifest destiny (stolen land), forced removal, genocide, assimilation, enslavement, oppressive policies, and capitalism.
