As a part of a technology of Indigenous artists who tirelessly labored to “break the ‘buckskin ceiling’” within the artwork world, Smith (an enrolled Salish member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) is understood for a prolific arts apply that merged piercing humor and profound socio-political commentary with poetic depictions of Native American life. Her five-decade oeuvre, which spans portray, collage, drawing, print, and sculpture, is an intimate visible lexicon that bridges private reminiscences and joyful resilience, exemplifying her lifelong refusal to be outlined by any singular narrative.
Jaune Fast-To-See Smith, “State Names” (2000) (picture courtesy Smithsonian American Artwork Museum)
Born on January 15, 1940, on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, the artist grew up alongside her sister touring with their father, a horse dealer, across the Pacific Northwest and California, the place she labored with him in canneries and on farms whereas attending college.
“I have memory of making things with my hands from mud, leaves, sticks and rocks from very early in my life,” Smith mentioned in an artist assertion for the Brooklyn Museum, describing how artwork allowed her to enter “another world, one that took me out of the violence and fear that dominated my life.”
In 1958, she started to pursue a proper arts schooling when she enrolled on the Olympic School in Bremerton, Washington. Her research had been interrupted over the following twenty years as she labored to assist herself and her household, together with her son, Neal Ambrose-Smith. Smith finally acquired a Bachelor of Arts in Artwork Schooling from Framingham State School in Massachusetts in 1976, and two years later, she earned a Grasp’s diploma in Visible Arts from the College of New Mexico in Albuquerque, the place she finally settled.
Jaune Fast-to-See Smith, “Petroglyph Park: Escarpment” (1987) (picture courtesy the Property of Jaune Fast-to-See Smith and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York)
Throughout this era, she based the Gray Canyon group of Native American modern artists — a collective that exhibited their work on native, nationwide, and worldwide scales. All through the Eighties and ’90s, Smith curated many main exhibitions centering the works of younger Native American artists, endeavors which might be as a lot part of her legacy as her personal apply.
“I’m so grateful for Jaune’s work as an artist, but even more so as a curator and promoter of other artists,” Zach Feuer, a Hyperallergic contributor who co-founded the Forge Venture and presently works because the director for the Gochman Household Assortment of Native modern artwork.
“Jaune did more than crack the buckskin ceiling; she’s built the foundation for a new world,” Feuer continued.
Jaune Fast-to-See Smith, “Trade Canoe: Making Medicine” (2018) (picture courtesy the Property of Jaune Fast-to-See Smith and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York)
Jaune Fast-to-See Smith, “Homeland” (2017) (picture courtesy the Property of Jaune Fast-to-See Smith and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York)
Jaune Fast-to-See Smith, “I See Red: Indian Map” (1992) (picture courtesy the Property of Jaune Fast-to-See Smith and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York)
Jaune Fast-to-See Smith, “Adios Map” (2021), within the assortment of the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork (picture courtesy the Property of Jaune Fast-to-See Smith and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York)
Because the late ’70s, Smith has been spotlighted in over 50 solo exhibitions, together with a serious 2023 retrospective organized on the Whitney Museum of American Artwork, Jaune Fast-to-See Smith: Reminiscence Map.
She has additionally curated greater than 30 exhibits, together with The Land Carries Our Ancestors on the Nationwide Gallery of Artwork in 2023, the museum’s first exhibition organized by an artist and its first present of Native artwork in three many years. The latest exhibition Smith curated, Indigenous Identities: Right here, Now & All the time, opens on Saturday on the Zimmerli Artwork Museum in New Jersey and highlights the work of 90 dwelling artists spanning over 50 Indigenous nations and communities throughout North America.
Along with her artwork and curatorial apply, Smith can be recognized for her dedication to land and cultural preservation efforts, which have reportedly helped save Albuquerque’s Petroglyph Nationwide Monument and Santa Fe’s Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA). One in every of her final initiatives was the institution of the Jaune Fast-to-See Smith Memorial Scholarship to assist future generations of Indigenous artists and cultural employees on the IAIA.
“There are people who carry our collective pain and mourning for us so we can move forward. It is a huge sacrifice,” Patricia Marroquin Norby (Purépecha), affiliate curator of Native American Artwork on the Metropolitan Museum of Artwork, wrote in an essay for Smith’s Whitney Museum retrospective.
“Smith’s images bear witness,” Norby continued. “They are a recounting of truths, creative acts carried out for all of us. She only asks us not to forget, to sharpen our minds, to resist, to remember the impact of the last battle. She reminds us what is sacred.”
