A Day So Red

Homage to the American Indians

All the artists portayed in this video work in different media. Richard Ray Whitman, a photographer, comes from the Yuchi tribe; painter Dan Daminga belongs to the Hopi people; Emmi Whitehorse is a Navajo painter; the Apache Bob Haozous makes constructed, sometimes fetish-like sculptures, while Edgar Heap of Birds, of the Ponca tribe, is a mixed-media artist. As will be evident, these artists are not practicing the traditional arts of their peoples, but using the language of contemporary art to articulate the relationship between their cultural past and present, to testify to their identity, and perhaps to heal the wounds of cultural displacement and discontinuity. Each short video segment takes a raw, matter-of-fact, unrhetorical look at an artist against the traditional music of his or her tribe. This footage does not offer a polished tribute to celebrities of the art world, but gives glimpses of personalities `living' their art.

© 1998-2008 The Roland Collection & Pira Intl.