Don Bailey - People I’ve Known
Simultaneously political and intensely personal, Don Bailey’s new exhibition People I’ve Known extends the artist’s acclaimed series of Native American portraits into exploratory narratives of his subjects. Known for his painted portraits taken from archival photographs, Bailey transforms his sources into dynamic narrative compositions incorporating vibrant color, traditional native design, contemporary cultural references, documents, and real and imagined landscapes. By re-purposing images taken from colonialist narratives about Native Americans, typically ones intended to “document a vanishing race,” Bailey simultaneously restores life to false documentary, and re-imagines them infused with contemporary power. In Bailey’s recontextualizing the often static, sometimes staged, portraits they are granted a fresh authenticity that reminds viewers that Native people are not relics of the past. On view through September 26.
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