ARTH 007. Modern and Contemporary Indigenous Art

This course examines the diverse styles and histories of modern and contemporary Indigenous art. Focusing on global contexts, including the Americas, Australia, and New Zealand, we will examine how art is a material form through which international relationsand exchanges between Indigenous artists and cultural producers have been practiced since time immemorial. We will consider how different forms and languages of visual art allow Indigenous artists, activists, and community members to express decolonial,diplomatic, economic, kinship, cosmological, and place-based relations within and beyond the category of fine and contemporary art. Students will come away with an understanding of and appreciation for the key issues that inform the reception, curation, and history of modern and contemporary Indigenous art, including the boundaries of gender, craft, and tradition; authorship and ceremony; interventions in archives, collections, and displays; sovereignty over self-representation, territory, and identity; ecocritical and land-based practice; and the impacts of commodification and nationalist exploitation.
Humanities.
1 Credit.
Catalog chapter: Art and Art History: Art History
Department website: http://www.swarthmore.edu/art-history

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