Art for an Undivided Earth: The American Indian Movement Generation
“Now That We Are Christians We Dance for Ceremony”: James Luna, Performing Props, and Sacred Space
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Published:May 2017
2017. "“Now That We Are Christians We Dance for Ceremony”: James Luna, Performing Props, and Sacred Space", Art for an Undivided Earth: The American Indian Movement Generation, Jessica L. Horton
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This chapter introduces the concept of an undivided earth through Emendatio, James Luna’s multimedia exhibition at the Venice Biennale in 2005. Luna reconstituted the archive of Pablo Tac (1822–41), a Quechnajuisom scholar who wrote the first dictionary and history of his people under missionary rule in New Spain while studying for the priesthood in Rome. Luna embedded Tac’s words in a multisensory chapel and danced for four days in a Venetian courtyard, demonstrating how colonial conversions filled European language, objects, and spaces with indigenous meanings. In contrast to prevailing accounts of the archival impulse in contemporary art, Horton emphasizes...
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