Sandra Hale Schulman
Special to ICT
The latest: Award-winning photographer screens new documentary, designer debuts fantastical collection and several films get world premieres in Canada
ART: Roller babes and damsels not in distress
Contemporary fine arts photographer Cara Romero, Chemehuevi, had a successful summer as she unveiled new photos at her Santa Fe gallery, screened her documentary, and won first and second places in the photography division at the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts’ Indian Market in Santa Fe.
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Romero was raised between her rural Chemehuevi reservation in Mojave Desert, California, and the urban sprawl of Houston, Texas — a duality that informs her identity and her photography. Her works present an unusual blend of fine art and editorial, with a visceral, slightly surreal, pop-culture approach to representing Indigenous and non-Indigenous cultural memory and a Native female perspective.
A new documentary, “Cara Romero: Following the Light,” explores Romero’s development as a photographer, giving a rare look behind the scenes at her sometimes troubled history and how following her vision saved her.
The film features interviews with leading Indigenous artists, including Romero and her husband, famed Pueblo potter Diego Romero; collaborator and artist Leah Mata Fragua, Northern Chumash; former U.S. National Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, Muscogee (Creek) Nation; and multimedia artist Cannupa Hanska Luger, Mandan, Hidatsa and Arikara, and Lakota. The original musical score is by composer Jason Goodyear.
She also unveiled a new work, “Starlight Starbright,” at her studio, taking a wildly unusual look at Indigenous female roller derbies, with colorful gals wearing knee pads and fishnets and dangling Native earrings howling and screaming for the camera.
Another new image, “Life in the West,” shows an Indigenous woman in traditional dress tied to a railroad track, a petulant look on her face and a pot on her chest. The train is surely coming like manifest destiny, but she is not afraid.
Holding court in her Indian Market booth, Romero was all smiles as she greeted the thousands of visitors. Her “White Sands” image won SWAIA Best of Division Photography, 1st Place Digital, and she brought home a 2nd Place win for “Starlight, Starbright.”
DESIGN: Young designer wows with feathered creations
Plains Cree designer Jontay Kahm presented an astonishing collection in Santa Fe at Indian Market in late August and a pop-up exhibit of his inventive, imaginative feather and fringed outfits put together with “hot glue and a prayer,” he says.
The exhibit, “Regalian Bodies,” included many technically impressive gowns by the 27-year-old designer presented with matching feathered face masks. Each is more colorful and exuberant than the last.
At the pop-up at the IAIA Museum of Contemporary Native Arts, “At Forever Beautiful: Inside My Mind,” Kahm sold miniature versions of the dresses with different color variations, wall hangings, “off-the-cuff dresses,” butterfly paintings, and earrings at the Museum Store.
“I really wanted to stand out with this show, because it was my big debut,” Kahm told Vogue.
Hailing from the Mosquito First Nation in Saskatchewan, Canada, Kahm dates his love of fashion to Lady Gaga’s wild music videos filled with otherworldly Alexander McQueen costumes.
He attended Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts, and used the collection he showed in Santa Fe as his thesis project. He said the feathers “represent honor, ribbons are for tying around your finger so you don’t forget, the dandelion flowers signify how you are there one moment and blown away the next.”
Some dresses draw from traditional fancy dance bustles that male powwow dancers wear. Kahm’s version is made with duck feathers and turkey quills instead of eagle feathers.
He will be moving to New York City to complete his master’s degree at Parsons School of Design to make more dresses that use his cultural background and more wearable dresses instead of the walking works of art he showed on the runway.
FILM: Documentary, animation and installations in Vancouver
The 2023 Vancouver International Film Festival will present several new films durings its run Sept. 28-Oct. 8.
The feature-length documentary, “WaaPaKe: Tomorrow,” directed by Vancouver-based filmmaker Dr. Jules Arita Koostachin, Cree, will get its world premiere on Oct. 1. It is a deeply personal film that unravels the tangled threads of silence suffered by residential school survivors through truth, freedom and power. At one point during the film, Koostachin steps in front of the camera to participate in the circle of truth. She is joined by members of her immediate family, as well as Indigenous communities across Turtle Island.
VIFF will also feature premieres of two short films, the animated short, “Two Apples,” by Coquitlam filmmaker Bahram Javahery, and “Modern Goose,” by Winnipeg director Karsten Wall.
“Two Apples” tells the story of a young woman who leaves her homeland and takes a single memento from her past. “Mother Goose” embeds audiences in the daily life of geese, who straddle the territory between ancient instincts and the contemporary world.
The festival will also feature a special installation by writer, director and animator Terril Calder, Métis. The installation, “Meneath,” draws from dolls and background images used in Calder’s 20 minute, stop-motion animated film, “Meneath: The Mirrors of Ethics.” Meneath means “island” in Anishinaabemowin.
Calder also produced a 2021 stop-motion animated film, “Meneath: The Hidden Island of Ethics.”
The latest installation features competing screens that show a Métis baby girl being pulled between a colonial world and a traditional one, with the traditional world offering a path toward healing.
One of the foremost Métis artists in Canada, Calder is a multidisciplinary creator with a background in performance, visual and media art. She currently is focusing on stop-motion projects.
*Correction: A new documentary, “Cara Romero: Following the Light,”features a musical score by composer Jason Goodyear, who is not Indigenous.
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