Erica Lord
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Un/Defined Self-Portrait Series; 2007; Digital Inkjet, dimensions variable |
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Left: (untitled) I Tan To Look More Native, 2006, Digital Ink, 4"x5" right: The Artifact Piece, Revisited 2008, Performance/Installation |
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Of Athabascan, Iñupiaq, Finnish, Swedish, English and Japanese heritage, Erica Lord’s work is tremendously influenced by both society’s response to her appearance and her life-long travel between her father’s village of Nenana, Alaska and her mother’s community in Michigan. In navigating these multiple worlds, cultures and their perceptions, she states:
Art has become my tool of translations, addressing the merging of blood, culture, gender, memory, and the idea of home…though I am telling these stories through the context of Nativeness, I believe the multiplicity of identity is something universal, a complexity that we begin to understand once we begin to deconstruct preconceived ideas and expand our intellectual limits.[1]
As an interdisciplinary artist, Lord primarily works in performance, film, photography and installation. Her pieces directly engage viewers in a dialogue that forces them to think critically about the stereotypes they hold about Native people and how these views have been long ingrained in mainstream society through popular culture, governmental policies and the media.[2] In her work Un/Defined Self-Portrait Series (2007), Lord confronts the viewer with multiple self-portraits that appear to be an array of headshots of completely different people. These diverse images work together to provoke viewers to reflect on their preconceived notions about how Native people look. Having been subjected to hurtful opinions about her facial features, eyes, and hair throughout her life, she states “Here [Alaska] I was considered a white baby by my relatives. In Michigan, I was an Indian…People say ‘you don’t look Native.’ What does that mean?”[3] Referring to the Series, she asserts, “This is what ‘Native’ looks like now.”[4]
Continuing her effort to challenge these deep-seated prejudices, Lord sought permission from internationally renowned performance artist James Luna (Luiseño) to perform her own version of his seminal piece Artifact (1987).[5] In his mixed-media installation, Luna put his body on display at the San Diego Museum of Man. Wearing only a hide breechcloth and surrounded by exhibition labels and other displays about his life, Luna’s performance was a bold statement intended to disrupt anthropological discourses concerning Native peoples, their lives, and their belongings. Lord’s performance of Artifact Piece, Re-visited (2009) at both the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York and the Museum of the North in Fairbanks, Alaska, brings our attention back to many of these same issues. By placing herself on display with labels referencing her body with regard to attracting a mate and childbearing however, she also critiques the historical construction of Native women under the predominately male gaze of the museum establishment.
Having received critical acclaim while showing her work both nationally and internationally, Lord now lives in Alaska for the first time since she began her artistic career. She views this return to her “home state” as being particularly significant because it has allowed her to make an even greater contribution to the dialogue on contemporary Alaska Native art by showing her work in conjunction with that of other indigenous Alaskan artists. In her role as an adjunct professor at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Lord teaches courses on Alaska Native performance and artistic, dramatic, and musical aesthetics.[6]
[1] Erica Lord, “Artist Statement,” http://www.polvo.org/subaltern/elord.htm.
[2] Lord received her B.A. in liberal and studio arts from Carlton College in 2001 and her M.F.A. in sculpture, photography, film, and photography at the School of Art, Institute of Chicago in 2006. For more on Erica Lord’s education, professional experience, and exhibitions, see the CV/resume link on her website http://www.ericalord.com.
[3] Mike Dunham, “Camera Chameleon: Nenana Artist Grapples with Ethnic Identity,” Anchorage Daily News, August 1, 2009, http://www.adn.com/arts/v-printer/story/884688.html.
[4] Ibid.
[5]. Erica Lord, “Artifact Piece, Revisited,” http://ericalord.com/section/39343ArtifactPieceRevisited.html.
[6] Lord was one of nine Alaska Native Artists featured in the exhibition Dry Ice: Alaska Native Artists and the Landscape at the Alaska House in New York (2009). She exhibited her works with Tlingit Artist Da-Ka-Xeen Mehner in a two-person show titled Authenticities at the Annex Gallery in Fairbanks, Alaska, in the same year. Also in 2009, she opened her first solo show in Alaska, The Search for Nuchalawoyya: Resistance and Reconciliation, at the Alaska Native Arts Foundation Gallery in Anchorage.
Visit the Erica Lord website