I-Witness Culture: Frank Buffalo Hyde
Artist Frank Buffalo Hyde (Onondaga/Nez Perce) believes it is the artist’s responsibility to represent the times in which they live. Transforming street art techniques into fine art practices, his humorous and acerbic narrative artworks do exactly that. In I-Witness Culture, Hyde investigates the space where Native Americans exist today: between the ancient and the new; between the accepted truth and the truth; between the known and the unknown. Hyde, who created eighteen works on canvas for I-Witness, divides his contemporary narrative into three sections: Paranormal: The Truth is Out There; Selfie Skndns; and In-Appropriate.
Pre-millennium, if you asked anyone if Native Americans existed, they would tell you only in the past, in black and white photos. They are almost extinct, they would say, and their lands are gone. If you ever meet one, ask if you can touch their hair, take a picture of them as proof that you actually saw one—like Bigfoot they exist beyond the scope of normal experience.
Post-millennium, Native Americans are part of the digital age, the selfie age, where if something hasn’t been posted to social media, it never happened. We are sharing information at a rate that has never been possible before in human history: We no longer just experience reality; we filter reality through our electronic devices. Today’s Native artists use technology as a tool of Indigenous activism, a means to document, and a form of validation.
In a nation obsessed with sameness—afraid of difference—popular culture homogenizes indigenous cultures, “honoring” us with fashion lines, misogynistic music videos, or offensive mascots and Halloween costumes. Today, these stereotypes and romantic notions are irrelevant as a new generation of Native American artists uses social media to let the world know who they are. Today, we are the observers, as well as the observed. We are here, we are educated, and we define Indian art.
Documenting the experience of Native American’s existence in the digital age—the ‘selfie’ age— “I-Witness Culture” explores technology as a tool of Indigenous activism. For Hyde, and this new generation of Native American artists, social media lets the world know who they are.
“If I can get someone’s attention about stereotypes and perceptions of contemporary Native art, I’ll have done my job,” Hyde was once quoted saying to a reporter.
Watch this exhibit walkthrough with Frank Buffalo Hyde HERE
Born in 1974 in Santa Fe, Frank Buffalo Hyde grew up in central New York on the Onondaga Reservation. He returned to New Mexico to study at the Santa Fe Fine Arts Institute and the Institute of American Indian Arts from 1993-1996. In 2009, Hyde was awarded a solo exhibition at the Wheelwright Museum in Santa Fe. In 2012, Hyde was an artist in residence at the Museum of Contemporary Native American Art.
“When working on a piece, I tap into the universal mind. The collective unconsciousness of the 21st century. Drawing images from advertisement, movies, television, music and politics. Expressing observation, as well as knowledge through experience,” Hyde is quoted on his website, “Overlapping imagery to mimic the way the mind holds information: non -linear and without separation. “I don’t need permission to make what I make. Never have…no artist should.” I-Witness Culture contains approximately 20 paintings, text and label copy.
