Andrea Carlson Podcast

My name is Andrea Carlson and I am Grand Portage Ojibwe from Northern Minnesota and 
currently I live in Chicago, Illinois. I am a painter and drawer. 

The piece in Art for a New Understanding at the Nasher Museum is a largescale ink and oil work 
on paper that is made of 60 panels, and its title is Ink Babel. It's a stack of landscape of 10 
various landscapes that is, what I describe as a bifurcation of a panorama shot. Each row is a 
panorama from still photography where you just have a really wide landscape. Not every column 
becomes a panorama, if you were to take cellulite film and shoot a panorama and take the film 
out of the camera, you would see various elements repeat themselves. Each column ends up 
being a time dominant panorama. It was a way of spilling out time and space in two directions. 
The piece in general is very dystopic, the black and white makes it seem like just a bunch of 
garbage has washed up on the shore. There are a not a lot of human elements, there are a lot of 
monstrous elements, there is a pig that kind of zooms in and out depending on which way you 
look at the work. I think the piece is about 10 feet tall, 15 feet wide, which makes it larger than 
the person looking at it, kind of consumes the person looking at it.

Apocalyptic landscape- I would describe this piece as being dystopic and apocalyptic- the work 
has references to number of texts that were floating or hovering in the landscape. One is fed to 
the pigs, another eats all right at the center, which is a form of feast where everything is 
consumed at the feast, and there is a yellow Emmanuel that is part of the work. What the text is 
referring to is various titles, various things that are crafted onto the landscape to understand this 
consumptive aspect of colonization, of how assimilation policies against Native people and 
against our culture was a form of European colonization, consuming Indigenous people and 
making us a part of its body. I used this metaphorically in references to cannibalism and 
references to how Native people have been accused of that in order to commit some atrocious 
things towards us. But I also think of the idea of the Wendigo - which is an Algonquian monster, 
who misidentifies who he consumes. I think misidentification has a lot to do with colonization, 
not being able to sympathize or empathize with people that are being colonized. That 
dehumanization process makes terrible things happen. There are fear elements in the piece, it's a 
little unsettling, but is also addressing some kind of hard truths about being consumed or being 
on that end of it and how that works in the landscape of time and space and if it will stop. 

A number of scholars talk about Indigenous Futurism, like grace Grace Dillon with talk about, 
Native Apocalypse is one of the topics talked about in Indigenous Futurisms. The idea is 
Indigenous people have survived apocalypses. There isn't end of the world in our future, there is 
an end of the world in our past. We have these relationships between what could be healed and 
what our future looks like- I was trying to pull that feeling, the ambient landscape feeling 
without necessarily having to make direct Indigenous references. I think that's how the text plays 
in, that's how the work is organized with ÒFed to PigsÓ- clearly pigs eat a lot of various things: 
sometimes garbage, sometimes humans, it's a way of destroying the evidence, and I feel that's 
kind of how colonization works. The reference of pigs is kind of they have no control, no power 
over that, over being used and utilized in that way. In the past I have referenced animals for how 
humans would put symbols on animals- but we think of animals as being violent or innocent, and 
they have no saying in how we characterize them. The ÒFed to PigsÓ was one of the elements 
that I have pulled in for Ink Babel. 

My Indigenous heritage, my Grand Portage Ojibwe heritage does play into my art, because I 
have no idea to make work from any other place that doesn't include my identity or my 
background, I have no idea what that might even look like. I speak our language, and so much of 
our philosophy, and so much of how we order the universe is in the structure of our language. 
That's somewhat how I order information on a page as well. When I think of the landscapes that 
are in work, that comes from a painted drum that has a lion with a horizon on it, it's also an 
aspect of George Morrison's work- he was also Grand Portage Ojibwe and he would have this 
continual horizon go from piece to piece. I have these various slight nods and references within 
my work and I get inspiration from disparate sources. As far as whether or not my art belongs to 
Native Art, I have a relationship with the term that might be different from other artists. I am not 
sure if Native Art is a thing, as far as a category, as far as a perfectly bracketed- it's definitely not 
a genre, there are over 500 tribes in North America. It doesn't serve everyone's desires very well- 
it can be an essentializing type term. In the same way, as I am also a woman, and if my work is 
categorized as Women's Art, it feels wrong to me. I feel like the term Native Art feels wrong, but 
I like art by Native people. I think it's still really important to identify as Native, and I think that 
it helps with context. I am not a true believer in the concept of Native art as a thing that can exist 
as a category.

Native Americans is not a monolithic term or culture, but I would say that there is a really cool 
solidarity between Native people. I am not Pueblo but I have many people in my life who care 
really deeply who are. I lean in, and I pay attention to other Indigenous communities, I would say 
maybe more than people who aren't Native. I think there is something to be said about the power 
of solidarity, and they call Pan-Indianism or Pan-Native Americanism, where things like 
powwows are essentialized and normalized and made monolithic. I think there is value in that, 
but I also love celebrating our own desires and interests and holding onto those things that don't 
also essentialize us into parameters of race. That conversation is grafted upon us.

I have so many stories, from a lot of Native artists, musicians and writers- we sometimes get 
together and exchange these stories about various interactions we had working with institutions 
and people of power. It's interesting how many people in the world think Native Americans don't 
exist, think that the Natives they do meet are diluted in terms of authenticity, are crippled by 
colonization, so therefore one when we do participate in our cultures and identify that it is in 
some way not real. These are trained to falsify our existences, but we collect these stories and we 
exchange them. We have started to strategize coming up with answers to ignorance and try to 
address when you see these patterns from people and institutions, where is the magic bullet, 
where is the perfect answer for racism when we encounter it. I think show like Art for a New 
Understanding is important, because it's part of exposure. It's part of "wow, we didn't consider 
that Natives were doing such robust, diverse work." The essentializing nature of stereotype gets 
blown apart by exhibitions like this. At the same thing, hearing "I didn't realize Natives were 
creating works like this," and it's a compliment, comes off as a settler epiphany, when it's our 
truth, our lives, the space we are walking in, and we know each other. But then when we 
encounter settlers who are blown away by us, weÕre like Òno, we have always been cool.Ó We 
might take it for granted, so it's always interesting. People are excited about the work Native 
people are producing because we have celebrated ourselves for a long time. I think shows like 
this and other group shows, they do that. If you have a solo show of Native work, you might still 
be able to pigeonhole Native people, but if you have diverse shows, where the work is so 
different, it really helps break down of the essentializing aspects of stereotypes for Native 
people.