Natalie Ball
Half Gallery
235 East 4th Street New York NY 10009
Art Basel Miami Beach 2020
Miami Beach Convention Center 1901 Convention Center Drive Miami Beach, FL 33139+41 58 206 27 06 e-mail:
4 – 8 December, 2020
Powwow Grand Entry is a solo presentation by Natalie Ball, a Yale 2018 M.F.A. graduate. She is a 2019 Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient, and most recently, a 2020 Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors grant winner. In 2010 Ball relocated to her ancestral homelands in Chiloquin, Oregon to raise her family and develop a sustainable studio practice.
As an Indigenous woman, who is Black and Indian, she communicates her experiences and a larger history of intersectionality through materiality and gesture. She expands on what Native American identity and art are, and what it can be. Her work always goes back to her ancestors, communities, family, American history, and personal experiences. Natalie pushes past the weaponized politics of Blood Quantum, which is the current law and community norm that governs Indian identity.
Through Powwow Grand Entry she is tracing this terrain through sculpture as Power Objects. These sculptures are offered as proposals of refusal to complicate and challenge discourses that have constructed a limited and inconsistent visual archive that currently misrepresents our past experiences and misinforms current expectations. Ball has forged a procession of Power Objects that are ready to hit the Powwow Arena in full narrative and on her own terms to reflect the complexity of Native American lives, like her own, to better understand our selves, the nation, and necessarily our shared experiences and histories.
In the work Powwow Queen, Ball includes a 40 year old moccasin that was formerly her father's, and a gold mouth piece "grill" from a mold of the artist's mouth and locally sourced elk tooth ivory. In Powwow Princess Ball creates a crown that would be worn during the reign as Powwow Princess of Portland, Oregon's Delta Park Powwow.
For a recent group show at Blum & Poe, she exhibited a sculpture called WAP (2020) two Dance Sticks for the future. It was a direct commentary on the indoctrination of her youth learning songs like This Land is Your Land which she later realized was propaganda whitewashing the theft of native land. This work acknowledges our American history of the US Government criminalizing her communities ability to gather, hold ceremonies, and dance. Natalie formed these Dance Sticks as a future ancestor for her descendants to dance with when they are liberated, and when their land is given or taken back.
As an Indigenous woman, who is Black and Indian, she communicates her experiences and a larger history of intersectionality through materiality and gesture. She expands on what Native American identity and art are, and what it can be. Her work always goes back to her ancestors, communities, family, American history, and personal experiences. Natalie pushes past the weaponized politics of Blood Quantum, which is the current law and community norm that governs Indian identity.
Through Powwow Grand Entry she is tracing this terrain through sculpture as Power Objects. These sculptures are offered as proposals of refusal to complicate and challenge discourses that have constructed a limited and inconsistent visual archive that currently misrepresents our past experiences and misinforms current expectations. Ball has forged a procession of Power Objects that are ready to hit the Powwow Arena in full narrative and on her own terms to reflect the complexity of Native American lives, like her own, to better understand our selves, the nation, and necessarily our shared experiences and histories.
In the work Powwow Queen, Ball includes a 40 year old moccasin that was formerly her father's, and a gold mouth piece "grill" from a mold of the artist's mouth and locally sourced elk tooth ivory. In Powwow Princess Ball creates a crown that would be worn during the reign as Powwow Princess of Portland, Oregon's Delta Park Powwow.
For a recent group show at Blum & Poe, she exhibited a sculpture called WAP (2020) two Dance Sticks for the future. It was a direct commentary on the indoctrination of her youth learning songs like This Land is Your Land which she later realized was propaganda whitewashing the theft of native land. This work acknowledges our American history of the US Government criminalizing her communities ability to gather, hold ceremonies, and dance. Natalie formed these Dance Sticks as a future ancestor for her descendants to dance with when they are liberated, and when their land is given or taken back.
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Preview begins 2 December
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USA fair art press release
