Nicholas Galanin


Nicholas Galanin is a Tlingit/Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist and musician from Alaska. His work often explores a dialogue of change and identity between Native and non-Native communities.

Background

Nicholas Galanin was born in Sitka, Alaska, in 1979. As a young boy, he learned to work with jewelry and light metals from his father. At London Guildhall University in England, he learned silversmithing and received a bachelor of fine arts. He then received a Masters of Fine Arts in indigenous visual arts at Massey University in New Zealand.

Artworks

''Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan''


2006. video. Peabody Essex Museum, Salem

Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan is a two-part, looping video mixes classic Tlingit dance and music with contemporary mainstream dance and music. In the first video, a dancer pops to a customary Tlingit song. In the second, a Tlingit dancer in customary regalia dances to a sparse electronic groove. The Tlingit song contains the words used in the title of the piece, "Tsu Heidei Shugaxtutaan" pronounced "soo HAYdee shoe GAK tu tahn."

''Things are Looking Native, Native's Looking Whiter''

is a photographic print that splits and combines two photographs. One half an unnamed Hopi-Tewa girl with a butterfly hairstyle and the other half depicts Carrie Fisher as Princess Leia with her classic cinnamon roll hair style. Nicholas Galanin took neither photograph, though he is the artist who combined the two images. Instead, the half that depicts the Hopi-Tewa girl was taken by Edward S. Curtis in 1921. shows two females that appear to have a similar look but one is idealized and glorified while the other is not even named. Galanin, in his interview with , argues that Curtis’ 40,000 photos of 80 Native American tribes was “stereotyping and romanticizing the indigenous people.” In the interview, it is clear that Galanin aims to enlighten his viewers about appropriation.  "I challenge those who view or listen to my work to consider that Indigenous people are not contained by colonial mechanisms designed to erase our existence through continually narrowing categories of Indian-ness." https://walkerart.org/magazine/nicholas-galanin-indigenous-art-contemporary-traditional