Rebecca Belmore Sovereign Acts III

Sovereign Acts III is the latest iteration of ongoing research into the relationship between performance, identity and contemporary Indigenous art. Contemporary artists take up this relationship by creating self-representations in theatre, music, powwow, ceremony, and visual arts. In Sovereign Acts III, the artists—Rebecca Belmore, Lori Blondeau, Demian DinéYahzi’, Martine Gutierrez, Robert Houle, James Luna, Alan Michelson, Kent Monkman, Shelley Niro, Cara Romero, Jeff Thomas, and Hulleah Tsinhahjinnie—create performances, photographs and installations to challenge ideas of normative and static identity. They use a variety of aesthetic strategies, including reenactment, remixing, memorialization, mimicry, parody, masquerade, and portraiture, underscoring the interdisciplinary nature of Indigenous art. At the heart of Sovereign Acts is a recuperation of captive and stage performers’ agency from the 1500s to the 1960s and their place within art history.