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The Venice Biennale Golden Lion to Jimmie Durham
by Modem – Posted May 15 2019
© Modem

[red]The Venice Biennale’s Lifetime Achievement Star: « A homeless person in the World »[/red]

Punning today’s commonly used expression « we are citizens of the world », in a 2017 interview, world renowned American sculptor and poet [red]Jimmie Durham[/red] states that: «These days, it sounds stupid to say I’m a citizen of the world. I don’t think I am a citizen, I think I’m a homeless person in the world, and I like to be that way».
The Venice Biennale, the major world event of contemporary art is marked this year by the question of its identity; the identity of the event itself and those of the selected artists and their works.

Just like Jimmie Durham, many more artists from all around the world, (America, Asia etc…) were represented this year. Jimmie Durham’s recognition symbolizes this year’s theme: identity, the ambiguities of people’s identities and the way society aims to categorize them.

The Venice Biennale awarded the coveted [red]Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Jimmie Durham[/red].
His art is subversive and political: I am a Cherokee artist who strives to make Cherokee art that is considered just as universal and without limits as the art of any white man Is considered….If I am able to see both Cherokee art and all other art as equally universal and valuable, and you are not, then we need to have a serious talk.
Jimmie Durham, Bulletin of the Alternative Museum, 1984 Still today Durham’s concerns about the rights of American Indians and colonialism have remained an important aspect of his thinking.

The form and content of his art makes Durham the lover of indefiniteness.
Going from writing, to theater, performance then painting, drawing, collage, printmaking, photography and video, he seeks to undermine mainstream imagery and narratives about Native Americans through ironic subversion since the 1980’s. In the same vein, he works with whatever is accessible to him: from stone, wood, animal bones to junk.
In essays such as ‘The Ground Has Been Covered’, published in Artforum in 1988, Durham argued that the oppression and misrepresentation of Native Americans was a fundamental reality of the US national project that needed to be challenged and undermined. In Europe (mostly Berlin) since the mid 1990’s his work has often focused on the deconstruction of national identities and an analysis of the narratives, architecture and monuments relating to them.

Durham’s identity questioning is a recurring theme as his own has recently been a source of controversy — he self-identifies as a Cherokee, and much of his works deal with issues of colonialism and Native American identity - however he is not a recognized member of the Cherokee tribe.

The artist—whose work consistently examines the ambiguity of identity and the way society aims to categorize individuals—is a fitting choice for a biennale that Rugoff - the Biennale’s curator - has said is inspired by our age of equivocation.

© Modem