Exhibition at the Navajo Nation Museum

Window Rock, Arizona

 

Opening Reception: July 12, 5–7 pm

Exhibition Dates: July 12, 2017 - May, 2018

The Navajo Nation Museum, Window Rock, AZ 86515

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In September 2016, artists Matthew Chase-Daniel and Jerry Wellman traveled to the Navajo Nation and surrounding areas to create the third project in the ongoing series E Pluribus Unum. These projects use their Axle Contemporary mobile art gallery as a photographic portrait studio. Over the course of two weeks, they created over 800 studio portraits. One copy of each was distributed to each participant; another was pasted to the exterior of the gallery-studio. A book was later published with all of the portraits, essays by the artists and by Navajo Nation Museum director Manuelito Wheeler, and a poem by Navajo Nation Poet Laureate Laura Tohe. The Navajo Nation Museum will exhibit all of the black and white portraits, images of the artists at work, and a life-size photograph of the mobile portrait studio.

 

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In 2016 we used our mobile art gallery as a natural-light, photographic portrait studio. This free portrait studio was open to all people in locations on and near the Navajo Nation for two weeks in 15 locations. In each portrait, the participant holds an object. We encouraged people to bring something with them that held some personal significance. Both the individual faces and the diverse objects speak to who the people are and the time and place of the photograph. Immediately after making the portraits, we printed two copies of each image, gave one to the participant, and glued the other to the exterior of the studio-gallery.

 

Over the course of the project we engaged over 800 passersby with free photographic portrait sessions, conversation, and participation in the creation of E Pluribus Unum: Dinétah. One final image, E Pluribus Unum, “from many one,” is all of the photos, each resized to line up the pupils of the eyes of the others in a digital stack of translucent layers. The final image is thus composed of all the portraits, in equal measure, creating one face that represents all who participated in the project: One soft, smiling, beautiful face. This image graces the cover of a book, which includes all of the portraits, essays by the artists and the director of the Navajo Nation Museum, a poem by the Navajo Nation Poet Laureate, and photographs of the locations.

 

 

The Axle Contemporary free portrait studio was open to all people, in locations on and near the Navajo Nation from September 2 through September 13, visiting Gallup, Prewitt, Toadlena, Window Rock, Chinle, Shiprock, and Farmington.The entire project will be exhibited at the Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, AZ, opening on July 12th, 2017 and running through the end of the year.  A book has been published with the entire collection of over 800  photographs, writing by participants about the phrase “e pluribus unum”, and a singular image on the cover created by blending the hundreds of individual portraits. Copies of the book are available for free to all of the participants and to local libraries, and is also available for purchase at Axle Contemporary, The Navajo Nation Museum in Window Rock, Art123 Gallery in Gallup, and online below or through most online booksellers.

 

The cover of the book is an image created by overlaying the hundreds of portraits from the project. This image is available as an archival editioned print at 16 x 20 for $500 (edition of 10). Contact us at 505-670-5854 or at info@axleart.com to order.