A Nation Is a Massacre
A Nation Is a Massacre, the first New York institutional solo exhibition by artist and activist and initiative R.I.S.E.: Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment and Demian DinéYazhi’
Its founder, provides a space aimed at creating awareness about ongoing inhumane acts of settler-induced violence against Indigenous bodies. Utilizing Pioneer Works’ risograph machine, which in operation and aesthetic resembles silkscreen, DinéYazhi’ will be producing a wall-based montage of text and image-based posters on-site. With their political aphorisms, all-caps fonts resembling newspaper headlines, and graphic images and colors, they resemble activist agitprop first popularized by Soviet Russia in the early 20th Century and later adopted and refashioned by artists in the wheat-pasting tradition, like Jenny Holzer and the Guerilla Girls.
Unlike these artistic forebears, however, who excluded Indigenous womxn and other Indigenous communities, DinéYazhi’ focuses exclusively on these marginalized groups, noting that, “The details are gruesome and american and as patriotic as gun violence and mass murder. A Nation Is a Massacre considers over 500 years of mass shootings and massacre, missing and murdered indigenous womxn, queers, trans, gender gradient/nonconforming, and two spirit folx, and numerous instances of environmental racism/injustice that continue to be ignored by citizens of a colonized country.”
A Nation Is A Massacre will exhibit May 17th - July 8th, 2018
in Brooklyn, NY at PIONEER WORKS 159 Pioneer Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, Third Floor Galleries and is curated by David Everett Howe.