Jimmie Durham

Jimmie Durham is a Cherokee, born in Arkansas in 1940. He is a visual artist, and also a politcal activist for the American Indian Movement and an essayist. In the ‘60’s and ‘70s he dedicated his time to theatre and performances, and since the ‘80s he was been creating strange objects, assemblages and installations that find their principal source in his Native culture, which he uses to deconstruct the stereotypes and prejudices of Western culture. For this reason he has already been recognized as one of the protagonists in the international current that has anthropology and so-called "postcolonialism" as its central moments of inspiration. He has participated in several international exhibitions, such as Documenta IX in 1992, and the 50. Biennale di Venezia. Ironic and shrewd, his work responds to the sceptisicm of Western culture for different beliefs and lifestyles with the recovery of materials and found forms: a plastic tube or a stick are not a serpent, but they can act as one, as they reanimate the situation they are placed in. Man is surely a part of nature that includes everything. However, postmodernly, couldn't the artificiality of certain materials that are integrated in his objects, the flirtation with kitsch of the common idea that one has of Natives and their culture, the history of the assemblage form, and the cross-reference with the "primitivism" of 20th century art, be keys to the irony with which Durham looks at himself as well? And doesn't this turn the prospective upside-down in an indication for the future instead of an impossible search for roots that are too buried by time?