Diversity versus identity?
Values and Culture Station VII: PLURALISM
"The geometric line is an invisible being. It is the trace of the moving point, that is, its product. It is created from the movement - and that by annihilation of the highest self-contained rest of the point. Here the leap is made from the static to the dynamic."
During the November 2015 Ignite seminars and art interventions in Denver, Dallas and Oklahoma, the BURN-IN team met Choctaw artist DG Smalling in Oklahoma City. A visit to his new studio was followed by an invitation to Durant's Choctaw Nation Casino, a very interesting experience from a cultural perspective as well. Using his excellently presented work at the casino, the artist explained to us the background of his paintings, which are a contemporary interpretation of his tribe's symbols.
An exhibition at BURN-IN Gallery was decided as the start of a planned collaboration. With the theme PLURALISM, the artist refers to his diverse cultural background.
Exhibition
On the theme of PLURALISM, Smalling puts family concerns first. It is not important what one looks like, what visual changes are going on within a family through intermingling of breeds and through different traits. What is important is the family - and it is CHOCTAW for the artist. Nevertheless, he accepts other families and races and clearly expresses this in his art. He combines skin colors and costumes of different races and presents empathetic images of respect and courage to mix, in which he specifically takes a stand on the BURN-IN theme 2016 DIVERSITY CONTRA IDENTITY.
Pluralism has since his years in Africa and Europe an essential meaning for the artist and also has a strong impact in his later artistic works.
Background
DG Smalling's artwork is based on the graphic line. Smalling has developed the line as the basis of all design into his "one line art". The uninterrupted line defines the contours of the object, the artist achieves a completion as a two-dimensional image by adding color or ink. He transfers the "hieroglyphic art" of his tribe and the traditional symbols both in technical terms and content into contemporary art.
Review
"This collection is a brief on Pluralism and Citizenship. It reflects upon both that of my own Tribal Nation (Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma) and your own (Austria). It is timely that we both are asking what constitutes 'self' in 'self-determination'.
Choctaws came to our concept as a result of immigrants seeking refuge some 400 years ago and it is not based on religion or race. Rather, it is based on family. Now our struggle is to expand our adoptions of non-Choctaw against the United States federal laws that restrict such expansions.
How we look is not what constitutes who we are and whom we love as family. That family members have loved others and their children look different than their grand-parents, aunts/uncles, or cousins is inconsequential.
They are family. And, family is Choctaw.It is important to offer this vulnerability reflecting the difficulties of my own people's struggle to embody our values. They do not always work. Mostly they do. The efforts have no end.
It is no different in Austria. Tensions and pain reflect this incessant work.
Please accept this reflection of childlike images as a contrast to vitriol. Let us remember that an adult explains to a child why such images are 'wrong' and 'un____'. Let the onus rest upon the adult that would do such a thing.
And like my own people, yours too struggles to embody your values. They do not always work. Mostly they do. The efforts have no end."
