Women Artists

Contemporary Native American women artists continue to explore precontact art traditions, styles developed during early colonialism/reservation confinement, and newer, experimental art concepts. Their art often functions as social criticism by using content that expresses alienation from Western culture. Whether the work is abstract in form or more representational, it usually has a social context.

In the 1990s, beginning with the 1992 quincentenary, women artists were represented in outstanding exhibits such as the Submuloc Show/Columbus Wohs, We're Still Here, Visions from Native America: Contemporary Art for the Year of the Indigenous Peoples, and Three Decades of Contemporary Indian Art at the IAIA.

We cannot discuss all of the Native American women artists who have impacted the twentieth century-only a small percentage. Contemporary Native American women artists with varying visions such as Emmi Whitehorse (Navajo), Kay WalkingStick (Cherokee), Jane Ash Poitras (Cree), Nora NaranjoMorse (Santa Clara Pueblo), Gail Tremblay (Onandaga/Micmac), Joanna Osburn- Big Feather (Cherokee), Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie (Navajo, Seminole, and Creek), Jean LaMarr (Paiute/ Pit River), Judith Lowry (Maidu), Shelley Niro (Mohawk), Rose Powhatan (Pamunkey), Sara Bates (Cherokee), Jaune Quickto-See Smith (Salish/Flathead), and yours truly, Phoebe Farris (Powhatan), just to mention a few, are dealing with issues such as the environment, genocide, native spirituality, racism, and feminism.

Where does the art of Native American women belong in a so-called pluralistic, postmodern, poststructuralist world? In the various post-ism worlds, the concept of identity is undergoing profound changes, as is the concept of high/ fine art versus low/popular art. Native American women artists and intellectuals, along with Native American men, are in the process of developing new definitions of Native American art and redefining Native American ethnic heritages. Native American women have always been an integral part of the creative vision and continue to contribute to Indian aesthetics independently, in collaboration with other women, and in tandem with Native American men.

In the multiplicity of art forms that she practices, Chase-Riboud is like Margaret Burroughs. They are, however, two very different souls, and a brief comparison of their attitudes bears witness to the greater opportunities afforded the generation of African American women artists who came after Burroughs's trailblazing generation. In 1997, Burroughs delivered the L. M. Clark Lecture at North Carolina State University in which she said, "It strengthens one to constantly be around people who look just like you." Contrast this statement with Chase-Riboud's from 1996, on the occasion of the opening of the African-American Artists in Paris 1945-1965 exhibition at the Studio Museum in Harlem : "[T]o travel anywhere outside your own culture, outside your country, is essential to evolve as an artist. To discover your own culture from the outside is essential."

As an artist, writer, professor, and video/theater set designer, Marie Cochran engages in visual/verbal dialogues centering on issues of race and gender from an African American cultural/historical/political perspective. Functioning as an interdisciplinary artist, Cochran utilizes found objects, constructed objects, and personal artifacts in her installations, performance pieces, and public art commissions. Cochran also highlights the achievements of other black women artists in critiques focusing on artists such as Carrie Mae Weems and Lorna Simpson.