Memories of a Suburban Ind’n | John Feodorov
Western Gallery & Sculpture Collection, WWU, Bellingham, WA - To Dec 7
John Feodorov is a Native American interdisciplinary artist of mixed Navajo/Diné and European ancestry who has been exploring a variety of themes through a range of media since the 1980s. Curator Faith Brower has selected work from various stages of Feodorov’s career in an effort to represent that range, but also highlight themes that have been with the artist since the get-go. Chief among them, writes Brower in her curatorial statement, are “identity, power, spirituality, or the environment.”
“In the exhibition, Feodorov’s artwork poses many questions and considerations about life in America. He shares a personal and profound look at his experience never fully belonging to either side of his family tree, yet finding himself, as he negotiates major power systems of colonialism, capitalism, and Christianity. Often using humor and parody to comment on paradoxes of power, hardly any of Feodorov’s work is truly lighthearted in nature. Instead, the work points towards ironies of American culture and demonstrates how morally void, exploitative power deeply impacts people, communities, and the environment.”
Feodorov’s more recent mixed-media works on wooden panel (60 inches square), particularly those that begin with his 2020 Assimilations series, show a marked movement toward a quilted if not gridded system, as evidenced by painted squares and rectangles, occasionally punctuated by photographs and newspaper clippings. Some of these painted squares and rectangles could be called soft-edge, given their tendency to not stay put. Some of the rectangles contain within them an interior system of mortared rectangles, like the red brick wall in My Life as a Suburban Ind’n (2023).
