Drawing parallels: 'Indigenization' at Duende Gallery goes beyond a curatorial matching game

GALISTEO — Imagine a 19th century one-room adobe building in rural Galisteo. It’s a Saturday afternoon, and a crowd has formed outside. Men in cowboy hats and dusty jeans mix with well-heeled art collectors and paint-spattered artists. A woman clicking a tally counter says they’ve already had over 250 visitors that day. Not bad for an art gallery that’s over an hour drive from Albuquerque and 30 minutes from Santa Fe.

Through an open door, you see what appears to be a framed Vincent van Gogh self-portrait on pink paper. Approaching it, you realize the signature is not that of van Gogh but T.C. Cannon (Kiowa/Caddo), one of the most renowned Indigenous artists of the 20th century.

As you walk through the exhibition, “Indigenization,” the surprises continue. Although Duende Gallery is a for-profit business, the work of 12 of the 13 artists in the show are on loan from Tia Collection, and they’re not for sale. All works are by Indigenous artists from the 20th and 21st centuries.

“Indigenization” was co-curated by local art world power couple Jaime Herrell (Cherokee Nation) and Robert King (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma).

Herrell has been curating contemporary Indigenous art for over a decade and has worked at such prestigious institutions as Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of the American Indian, Ballroom Marfa and IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts.

King, her partner, is a ceramic artist and the owner of Duende Gallery, which he opened just over a year ago, in April 2024.

“This is New Mexico’s oldest dance hall,” King said, referring to the wood-floored adobe gallery. “Community meetings have been held here. Folks have gotten married and celebrated together in this space for a very long time. So, it’s humbling to be its latest chapter.”

“Jaime and I are excited, because the show’s title is ‘Indigenization,’ and we’re Indigenizing the art space,” he said. “This isn’t your typical ‘white cube’ gallery. We like having a gallery that has a history that’s bound to community.”

Judging by the cross-cultural camaraderie at the opening, their efforts at building community are paying off.

Next to each artwork is a museum-style wall label noting the work’s visual or conceptual affinities with a work by Jean-Michel Basquiat, Pablo Picasso or another artist from the Western canon. Even casual art viewers will recognize some of these art historical references, so everyone can join in the fun of discussing what they think those references mean.

“Hopi Maiden, Homage to Warhol” by David Bradley (Minnesota Chippewa-Ojibwe Tribe), gives the Western art reference in the title itself. Albuquerque-based artist Jesse Littlebird’s (Santo Domingo Pueblo, Pueblo of Laguna) take on Jacques-Louis David’s “The Death of Socrates” is recognizable to art history buffs by the central figure’s distinctive “pointing” pose. In other works, including the diptych of vertical stripe paintings by Jeff Kahm (Plains Cree), which the curators paired with a Frank Stella, and Rick Bartow’s (Wiyot Tribe) disturbing “Predator’s Dream,” which they paired with a Francis Bacon, the influence is revealed through similarities in form, color and technique.

“Some of the parallels are very clear,” King said. “For instance, Rick Bartow was highly influenced by Fritz Scholder (Luiseño). Fritz Scholder is on record for being highly influenced by Francis Bacon. So, you can follow the lineages in some cases.”

But “Indigenization” is not simply a curatorial game of matching Indigenous artworks with similar-looking non-Indigenous ones, or showing a unidirectional line of influence. Bradley’s “Indigenization” of Warhol is about more than just painting an Indigenous figure in a pop art style; it shows how Warhol’s idealized portraits reify socio-economic status. Kahm’s “Indigenized” Stella injects cultural context into the otherwise impersonal language of minimalism, with colors Herrell likens to Plains ribbon skirts.

“We are underscoring how Native folks have inserted themselves into the art world,” Herrell said.

Some of the most instructive pairings are the least obvious. Thinking about Martine Gutierrez’s (Mayan) self-portraits in relation to early 20th century photographer Edward Curtis’ gold-tone images of “vanishing” Indigenous peoples allows us to more fully appreciate Gutierrez’s exercises in playful self-exotification. Curtis brought a colonialist gaze to his Indigenous subjects, making them remove all traces of modern life, such as wristwatches, and to put on elaborate ceremonial outfits, sometimes mixing and matching regalia that would never have been worn together. Gutierrez parodies these colonialist portraiture practices, but pushes them to such an extreme that the irony evaporates and recondenses into a new kind of artistic self-expression.

“She is reclaiming the photographic portrait as an Indigenous person,” Herrell said.

The only works available for purchase are King’s own ceramic vessels, which he makes using local earth he collects himself. There is something poetic about seeing his pieces inside an adobe building that’s also made from local earth.

While art world purists may raise an eyebrow at a gallery owner curating himself into a show, the practice is not unheard-of at scrappy, artist-run spaces like Duende. Even Wallace Whitney, who co-founded New York’s prestigious Canada Gallery, self-exhibited in Canada’s early years.

And who can really blame King for wanting to recoup some meager portion of the capital he’s invested in this admirable but incredibly risky venture? Even if he sold all his vessels, the proceeds would barely cover the cost of his recent gallery upgrades, including a state-of-the-art security system, or his hefty new insurance rider — both of which, the curators said, were necessary prerequisites for Tia Collection to agree to loan them the artworks.

“We’re super fortunate to have had the Tia Collection work with us so closely, but also to trust us with these works,” Herrell said. “They usually get lent out to (more prestigious) institutions all over the world. For example, the T.C. Cannon has not been on display for about 35 years, and the Detroit Institute of Art was asking for it, but we asked first. And Tia honored that.”

“They even framed it for us,” she added.

Having access to Tia Collection’s extensive archive of Indigenous art allowed Herrell and King to produce a groundbreaking exhibition that shows how generations of postwar and contemporary Indigenous artists have brushed up against Western art history and made it their own.

“Many people think these are two different silos, and in many ways they are — contemporary Indigenous art and contemporary Western art,” King said. “But these worlds are playing with each other. Native artists are paying attention over here (to non-Native art), and they’re influencing the global art zeitgeist and changing the way that contemporary art is being made.”

I could see Herrell and King’s smart, soulful, highly original exhibition traveling to museums across North America. But perhaps it’s even more potent in its present location, off the beaten path in the ranchlands of Galisteo. After all, “Indigenization” is not just about moving the margins to the mainstream but moving the mainstream to the margins.

'Indigenization' at Duende Gallery goes beyond a curatorial matching game