Keep Calm and DeColonize

Four contemporary artists with native American heritage will be mounting a new exhibition in Amsterdam this spring called “Indigenous Americans: Post Colonial Expressions.” This is an excellent derivation of the typical grafftiti/street art story that we like to expose – especially when it is rooted in inviting more people into the room that continues to redefine itself.

Curator Hyland Mather and team at STRAAT Museum have been building a good foundation of diversity in the last few years as their collection has grown and their exhibitions schedule widens – with a professed mission to examine the street art and graffiti culture as it is expressed around the world.

“ ‘Indigenous Americans: Post Colonial Expressions’ speaks to the unity a diverse culture embodies, and to the deeply rooted history of Indigenous makers and their ongoing relationship with public space painting,” say organizers.

The four participating artists are Jaque Fragua, Danielle SeeWalker, Kaplan Bunce, and Anthony Garcia Sr. You may be familiar with one or all of them – we recall the text billboards of Jaque Fragua a few years ago in a distinctive hand that alerted public to some historical facts like “This Is Indian Land”, on a Los Angeles construction site wall – and some highjacked signs saying ”Sacred” and “Stop Coal”.

“I see graffiti as a primordial art form of mark-making that started on caves and rocks as petroglyphs or pictographs,” Fragua said on ArtNet a few years ago. “The language is a bit different in modern times, but the spirit of visual storytelling is still there.”

“The contemporary Urban Art landscape to me looks like a mix between a culture-rich sharing of art practices from around the globe,” says artist Kaplan Bunce in a press release from the museum. “I see unity in the community and have found that by continuously practicing my indigenousness throughout these spaces I am continuing a pathway made by those who have been making marks on walls for all of time.”

Exhibition opens Saturday April 8th, 2023, from 7-10 pm in the STRAAT Gallery at STRAAT Museum, with the artists in attendance.
In addition to the gallery exhibition which runs through Sunday June 4th,
2023, each artist will also create a mural scale work for STRAAT’s permanent collection in our massive main hall.

Learn more about the artists here:

Anthony Garcia Sr. aka Birdseed Anthony

Kaplan Bunce aka Kapache1

Danielle SeeWalker aka SeeWalker

Jaque Fragua aka Mobilsavage

STRAAT Museum Operating Hours:
Tuesday – Sunday 10 am – 6 pm
Monday – noon – 6 pm
Location:
NDSM Plein 1, 1033WC,
Amsterdam, Netherlands
www.straatmuseum.com

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