This presentation offers a focused selection of work by photographer, filmmaker, and performance artist Dana Claxton (Hunkpapa Lakota, born 1959), whose body of work has long dealt with the colonial histories of the United States and Canada, as well as issues of Native representation. Over the course of a thirty-five year career, Claxton has amplified Indigenous perspectives, culture, and history, while using photographs and film to respond directly to dominant stereotypes of Native peoples that permeate colonial visual culture. Claxton often uses humor and juxtaposition to contradict the temporally frozen “Indian” of the colonial imagination, to affirm contemporary Native experiences, and to imagine Indigenous futures. Through her art, Claxton asserts what Anishinaabe theorist Gerald Vizenor termed survivance—a combination of Indigenous survival, resistance, and presence. Consequently, Claxton’s (re)presentations of Indigenous identity, culture, and history convey aesthetic sovereignty, insisting on Native peoples’ right to self-determined representation.

This presentation is organized in conjunction with Claxton’s Monsen Photography Lecture on May 12, 2023. This annual lecture brings key makers and thinkers in photographic practice to the Henry. Named after Drs. Elaine and Joseph Monsen, the series is designed to further knowledge about and appreciation for the art of photography.