Reclaiming our narratives & space
My initial settlement plan for 2020 would have been site specific pertaining to Plymouth U.K. and various locations in the city upon streets and walls. I had planned to create a work of art each day, mini murals that would give me agency to extend my voice, taking space back in reclamation of Indigenous narratives.
Using my knowledge in the creation of murals I am using this as the platform and medium to create the site-specific works within the new digital format. The new site-specific works will be created in Fayetteville, AR, Tahlequah, Ok, Lawrence, KS and Atlanta, GA. More locations to be announced. These areas are significant to stories and sites of Indigenous lands, past and importance. The murals will be no bigger than 15ft x 15ft and will take a day to complete with the emphasis of imagery being a variety of Effigy pots of the Mississippian period and Pre-Columbian pottery from specific historical areas where the murals are painted.
Colorful and contemporary in painting process, yet historical and done in good faith- the Effigy pots will confront non-Indigenous viewers to evaluate their place on the land they are on and to hold dialogue and thought in a new way to understand the past, an Indigenous past. In this first iteration to the project I painted in Fayetteville, AR a frog effigy pot. This pot is from a village site about 150 miles NorthEast of Fayetteville in Arkansas dated to be from the 1300’s.
Arkansas was home to many Indigenous groups, Caddo, Quapaw and Mississippians in this period 900AD-1450AD. Much pottery was being made in many regions in this time. Many of these pots now set in museums and collections across the world- yet none are on a wall ready to confront and hold valuable goods- collective efforts and again be unearthed by new eyes.
I feel this image and process of story will be a useful tool to convey means of conversation of European/ colonial presence in America. These place makers are murals- by painting them in locations of indigenous erasure, I am bringing them back and reclaiming space that was once ours and still is. The new settlement project scope has shifted for me but like all things in time, settlements move and recreate new modes to live and survive. Indigenous people have survived the worse of atrocities inspired by man with European expansion and colonial conquest. We are here now to shift the old and create new narratives of Indigenous existence through art, conversation and land back.
Yatika Starr Fields paints objects and forms that represent the past and present from his perspective as a member of the Osage, Cherokee and Creek Nations of Oklahoma, surrounded by beautiful colors and patterns joined by rhythm and dance from tradition. With a background in graffiti along with fine arts, classical and traditional landscape art, his process has journeyed from abstract to most recently focusing on representational, landscapes and Figurative.