Alan Michelson (Mohawk)

18th Biennale of Sydney: All Our Relations

Art on the River Exhibit

Sculpture Magazine

Alan Michelson lives and works in New York City. Through his conceptual work, he develops his pieces using the most advantageous mediums relevant to his projects. He says, “My understanding of place and history is shaped and conditioned by Haudenosaunee concepts and perspectives. The forms that I invent are often based on Haudenosaunee cultural models like wampum belts, blended with media or materials from the dominant culture such as video or glass. My work is grounded in place and informed by history, and therefore research is an integral part of my practice.” His work is elegant, eloquent, and strategic, often referencing issues around environmental advocacy, the complexities of sovereignty, and the often vexed juxtaposition of Native and non-native cultures.

Alan is steeped in the discourse of contemporary Native art and has been invited to exhibit his work at notable institutions including a solo exhibition at NMAI in New York, group shows at NMAI in DC, The Whitney Museum of American Art, the Heard Museum, and internationally in Brazil, the UK, and Canada. He is a recent Eiteljorg Fellow. This year he will be working on three related new works for three upcoming exhibitions:  the 2011 Eiteljorg Fellows Exhibition at the Eiteljorg Museum in Indianapolis; the 18th Biennale of Sydney, Australia; and Changing Hands: Art Without Reservation at the Museum of Arts and Design in New York.

Alan is our first Visual Arts Fellow.

Video description:

1. Shattemuc, 2009 HD video, 31 minutes Stereo sound track with original music by Laura Ortman

A video shot at night from a boat on the Hudson River depicting, in the projected beam of the marine searchlight, passage upriver from Hook Mountain to Haverstraw Bay. It retraces part of Henry Hudson’s 1609 voyage in which his crew had a bloody encounter with the local natives. The searchlight projection references Hudson River Night Line boats which shone spotlights onto shoreline monuments for touring passengers. Embedded also are allusions to Hudson River School painting. The work temporally encapsulates, in its passage from wooden shoreline to modern marina—via industrial quarry, luxury housing, village, and power plant—problematic and enduring aspects of local as well as national history.

2. TwoRow II, 2005 Four-channel video with sound 13:05 minutes 108 × 576 inches

A monumental, panoramic video installation of the two banks of the Grand River, which divides Six Nations Reserve from non-native townships in Ontario. The design is a synthesis of two sources: moving panoramas and the Two Row, an historic Iroquois wampum belt. Woven of purple and white shell beads, the belt signified—through two purple rows alternating with three white rows—an early treaty of respectful coexistence between the Natives and Europeans. The rows symbolized the parallel paths of an Iroquois canoe and a European ship, and their respective laws and customs, which were to remain parallel and inviolate. A sound track combining a Canadian cruise boat captain’s official narrative on the river with Native elder narratives complete the work.

3. Mespat, 2001 Video (19:24 minutes), turkey feathers, monofilament, steel Original stereo sound track by Michael J. Schumacher 132 × 168 × 12 inches

Based on a popular, pre-cinematic entertainment—painted moving panoramas—this video installation pans continuously along the 3.5-mile shoreline of urban Newtown Creek, the estuary dividing Brooklyn and Queens. It revisits an area known as “Mespat” (“bad water place”) to the native Lenape, who were displaced from there by European colonists in 1642. Polluted by raw sewage and industry from the mid-19th century, the creek was also the site of a 17-million gallon oil spill in the 1950’s.