ArtNow: The Soul Is a Wanderer
Explore the 2023 iteration of Oklahoma Contemporary's biennial exhibiton featuring Oklahoma artists
Installation view of ArtNow: The Soul Is a Wanderer (2023-06-22/2024-01-15) by Isaac Diaz, Joseph Rushmore, Moira Redcorn, Elspeth Schulze, Yusuf Etudaiye, and Nathan Young Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
"Crucial to finding the way is this: there is no beginning or end. You must make your own map." — Joy Harjo, "A Map to the Next World," 2000
Take a stroll through the Eleanor Kirkpatrick Main Gallery
ArtNow: The Soul Is a Wanderer was on view June 22, 2023-Jan. 15, 2024.
Inspired by Joy Harjo's poem
Thirteen cross-generational artists came together in this exhibition organized by Tulsa-based Guest Curator Lindsay Aveilhé, taking its title from a line in the poem "A Map to the Next World" by 2019-2022 United States Poet Laureate Joy Harjo (b. 1951, Tulsa; Muscogee Nation).
A Map to the Next World (2023) by Sterlin Harjo Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Walking with Joy Harjo
In Sterlin Harjo's video installation, A Map to the Next World , poet Joy Harjo wandered among the land of her residence in Oklahoma. Audio of the poet reading her exhibition-inspiring poem played throughout.
Wóaič’ibleze (Self-Reflection) (2023) by Kite Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Artist Kite's (Oglala Sioux Tribe) meditative video was inspired by To Win "Blue Woman," a spirit prayed to by Lakota midwives. To Win (or Ton Win, "birth woman") is called on to aid women in labor and assist newly deceased humans in being born back into the spirit world.
Installation view of ArtNow: The Soul Is a Wanderer (2023-06-22/2024-01-15) by Robert Peterson, Isaac Diaz, and Yatika Starr Fields Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Making your own map
The artists drew inspiration from the poem’s call to remember the past as we journey beyond the present by unearthing complex histories and imagining alternate routes toward emancipatory futures of our making.
Historical impressions
Ashanti Chaplin's Earth Elegy installation was comprised of video, aural, sculptural, and material impressions of the thirteen Historic Black Towns in Oklahoma. The obelisk—made of clay sourced from the towns—video and original score serve as both "nonsite" and "nonument."
Coded language, reimagined history
Nathan Young's video installation explored the tradition, development, and usage of Plains Nations sign language. Artist Warren Realrider (Crow/Pawnee) in the video used the coded language to reimagine the experiences of first contact between settlers and First Nations peoples.
Ferrous Form/Unform (detail) (2023) by Molly Kaderka Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Celestial and terrestrial
Molly Kaderka's handmade, site-specific installation depicted celestial and terrestrial realms, capturing the temporal and the infinite in a single space. The marbled paper's texture evoked rocks and cellular forms of living organisms born from the same star long ago.
Bringing traditions into the contemporary
Yusuf Etudaiye's group of ceramic pieces meditated on the Ghanian concept of Sankofa—a quest for wisdom by learning from the past to ensure a strong future. Etudaiye, working with clay for 30+ years in Oklahoma, infused traditional West African imagery with contemporary motifs.
Imperfectly perfect, together (2023) by Robert Peterson Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Imagining the future
Robert Peterson's ArtNow painting, his largest to date, illuminated the sacredness of Black love and the radical act of visibility. "I am thinking about the future—how centuries from now I want people to view Black people and Black families engaging with normalcy and harmony."
Installation view of ArtNow: The Soul Is a Wanderer (2023-06-22/2024-01-15) by Ruth Borum-Loveland Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
A site for questioning, dreaming, and action
Through distinct perspectives and approaches, the painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance, photography, and ceramics in the exhibition capture moments of passage, reckoning, and renewal. Together, the works evoke the landscape of Oklahoma.
Osage creation story
In Moira RedCorn's painting, the Indigenous artist illustrated the story of the Osage Nation's creation, in which the Osage peoples were sent down from the stars to be caretakers of the earth. Layers of select text paid homage to her ancestors who left what no longer served them.
Creating a space
Isaac Diaz's installation spoke to reinterpretation as a way of navigating life by building space from rubble. Reimagining Latin American and pre-Columbian imagery and symbols, Diaz referred to the space he has created as one "made from what my own path has thus far taught me."
Installation view of ArtNow: The Soul Is a Wanderer (2023-06-22/2024-01-15) by Yatika Starr Fields Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Whose kicks on Route 66?
Yatika Starr Fields visually referenced Ed Ruscha's word paintings in order to reflect on the fraught history of America's "main street." Route 66 stretches 2,400+ miles through the lands of 25+ tribal nations; Fields invited viewers to consider the darker legacy of the highway.
A record of home
Ruth Borum-Loveland created her own language of place during meditative walks near her home. Building a library of color studies from the soil and rock samples she collected, the artist pulled lines of dirt bonded with egg yolk on paper, an accumulated record of where she's been.
No Known Place (2019/2023) by Joseph Rushmore Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Joseph Rushmore's non-narrative selection of photographs captured the cracks in American society and the hope that moves us to continue.
Installation view of ArtNow: The Soul Is a Wanderer (2023-06-22/2024-01-15) by Ashanti Chaplin, Molly Kaderka, and Isaac Diaz Oklahoma Contemporary Arts Center
Through distinct perspectives and approaches, the painting, sculpture, video, installation, performance, photography, and ceramics in the exhibition captured moments of passage, reckoning, and renewal.
Together, the works in The Soul Is a Wanderer evoked the landscape of Oklahoma—its topography and our shared reality—as a site for questioning, dreaming, and action.
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