Idyllwild Arts Foundation and the Native American Arts Center presents Cheyenne Randall: Paste, Present, Future. The public art installation features four site-specific murals by artist, Cheyenne Randall (Cheyenne River Sioux, b. 1978), whose interdisciplinary practice investigates iconographic and historic photographs, blending imagery of celebrities, depictions of Indigenous people by non-native individuals including Edward Curtis and Roland Reed, and landscape, with tattoo elements, text, and collage, creating a pastiche of imagery that questions identity, constructed representation, and mimetic meaning and semiotics.

 

Working in digital photography, Photoshop, paint, and wheat paste installation, Randall investigates appropriation – layering tattoos onto celebrities, historic figures, redressing and interrogating material and popular culture, image ownership in his ShoppedTattoos and Hollywoodnt series. The artist also creates landscape collages in his Mergers and Acquisitions series, analyzing land, land ownership, and development; creating often surreal and juxtaposed imagery; decolonizing and defetishizing landscape in the canon of art history.

 

“I vandalize pop culture and experiment with tattoo design and placement in my work,” said Randall. “I am a self-taught artist, raised outside of my tribal lands. My intent with this installation is to ignite curiosity for viewers and create conversation around the "pre-history" of America,” 

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Press Release 

 

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