Visualities: Perspectives on Contemporary American Indian Film and Art

Aboriginal Beauty and Self-Determination: Hulleah Tsinhnahjinnie’s Photographic Projects

189 aboriginal Beauty and self-determination: Hulleah tsinhnahjinnie’s Photographic Projects cYntHia FOWler multimedia artist Hulleah tsinhnahjinnie (seminole/muskogee /diné) has directly examined the notion of beauty in several of her key works from the 1990s. Her interest in this subject coincides with the so-called “return to beauty” that established itself in art historical discourse beginning in the early part of the same decade. tsinhnahjinnie’s work must be evaluated on its own terms, but the 1990s discourse on beauty provides an interesting context for tsinhnahjinnie’s exploration of beauty. Grounded in the politics of self-determination, the diné concept of hózhó, and a critique of Western constructs of native identity, tsinhnahjinnie engages beauty within a political framework that addresses some of the key concerns of native peoples in the united states. Beginning in the early 1990s, art historians and critics embarked upon a self-described investigation of what they perceived as a “return to beauty” in 1990s art.1 critic dave Hickey’s book of essays The Invisible Dragon laid the foundation for this discussion.2 it was soon followed by additional writings and several key exhibitions. For example, in 1998, Uncontrollable Beauty: Toward a New Aesthetics was published, a compilation of essays that attempt to comprehend the absence of beauty in twentieth-century art and its resurfacing as the century came to a close.3 as these new examinations of beauty explain, beauty had been absent for a reason. identifying beauty as a construct rather than an unmediated aesthetic experience, poststructuralist critique of the 1980s called for an “anti-aesthetic” that rejected Western 190| Cynthia Fowler constructs of beauty.4 taking a different angle of attack, feminist critique seriously challenged the long history of Western art that defined beauty as the passive, sexualized female body.5 as art historian elizabeth Prettejohn observes in Beauty and Art, the inherent danger in the “return to beauty” was that it would yield a return to “nostalgic, if not positively reactionary” art and art criticism if these important negative critiques of beauty were simply pushed to the margins.6 regarding Beauty, a 1999 Hirshhorn museum exhibition, grappled with the problematic nature of the new search for beauty by examining works by postmodern artists known for challenging Western constructs of beauty, including photographs by cindy sherman and lorna simpson.7 noting that “postmodernists have critiqued aesthetics as an expression of elitist culture,”8 co-curator neil Benezra explains, “Here beauty is not considered a traditional aesthetic ideal to be sought after for its own sake, but rather a complex cultural construct.”9 art historian Wendy steiner adds another layer of complexity to the problematic nature of beauty, arguing that the absence of beauty in modernist art was not due to a progressive agenda that questioned social constructs or challenged the exploitation of the female body, but a “resistance to the female subject as a symbol of beauty” that was “related to real-world struggles during the past century—the past two centuries, in fact—as society learned (and continues to learn) to consider women as fully human.”10 For steiner, the modernist rejection of beauty was a flat-out rejection of women. she too calls for a return to beauty, but one in which artists and art critics “imagine beauty as an experience of empathy and equality.”11 it is within the context of this debate about beauty that tsinhnahjinnie ’s work will be considered. like sherman and simpson, tsinhnahjinnie presents a powerful challenge to Western constructs of beauty. even more, her celebration of women’s beauty serves as a powerful corrective to the rejection of female beauty that steiner uncovers in her book. However, tsinhnahjinnie’s project does not end there. anticipating steiner’s call for a beauty grounded in “empathy and equality,” she defines the beauty of women in terms of their empowerment, grounded in her own perspective as an indigenous woman. tsinhnahjinnie’s collage When Did Dreams of White Buffalo Turn to Dreams of White Women? (1990) is one of a group of works to be considered in which the artist raises questions about definitions of beauty in relation to native women. in the lakota tradition, White Buffalo calf Woman was an exceptionally beautiful woman who introduced the pipe ceremony to the lakota people. the title of this work directs our attention to the historical shift from an indigenous definition of beauty before colonization, Beauty and...