nikihk series

nikihk = ‘my home’ (Nēhiyawēwin / Plains Cree)
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nikihk 1070 contemporary Indigenous Native American abstract expressionist urban photo-based painting with tribal geometric circle adornment by matriarchal First Nations Plains Cree Anishnawbe artist Bebonkwe Brown (olive green and light green colors)

please email Winter@Winter-Brown.com for pricing & purchase enquiries.

nikihk means ‘my home’ in Cree

In this photo-based painting series I use a combinations of photography, painting and collage techniques, remixing layers of urban and colonial imagery into digitally rendered contemporary Native abstract paintings.

Throughout my many years of living in NYC, I’ve been gathering imagery of urban walls and surfaces with digital (still and video) cameras while walking the city (#walkingthecity is a term & hashtag I coined & have been using to describe this foundational aspect of my practice for many years).

I incorporate this imagery into my practice in various ways, including my earlier Spirit Walls, a series of abstract photographs that I consider part of my painting practice. Much of the nikihk series entwines this photographic practice with elements of other painting and drawing series, as part of my continuation of Plains First Nations painting histories and practices.

As I move through the city I find myself constantly finding/creating these wall ‘paintings’. They become paintings through recognition, attraction, framing and gathering. I do this with my Iphone or my DSLR. The numbers in artwork titles are the original photo numbers. The process is akin in certain ways to gathering traditional plant materials and medicines. I’m now adorning/entwining/layering/juxtaposing these wall images to create what I call photo-based paintings (IE also my term). They contain contemporary versions of tribal geometries and/or or materials, in keeping with my interTribal and putting on beads & feathers paintings and the entangled drawings.

As part of this adornment process, I’m continuing my use of circles spaced evenly over the painting surface, creating non-linear, abstract narratives (again, my terminology). In some pieces I’m layering and altering images, letting one wall become part of the tribal geometry of another, or even of itself. This is an extension of my use of these circles as both a continuation of Amerindian abstraction, and as visual and symbolic portals into different aesthetic and metaphoric layers, also present in my acrylic paintings.

In others works the adornment geometries or elements are physical materials, both traditional/Native and/or contemporary/urban. These 3D adorned photo-based paintings are also part of the gatherings series,

Some of these adornments are repurposed refuse materials or technically replicated objects that ruefully refer to cultural, colonial and/or environmental histories and concerns. Others are adorned with seeds gathered from city streets (oftern after storms), continuing elements of the putting on beads & feathers series and my earlier wall sculptures.

Part of my attraction to the urban walls I photograph is the effect of the many layers (tags, paint, stickers, ripped posters, decay). I often use many layers when painting, with an awareness of the importance of what lies underneath or is partially visible. I’m now adding additional, Indigenous layer/s to these urban/natural ones, which poetically/aesthetically/metaphorically draw attention to what lies ‘underneath’ or within, in a manner related to other painting & drawing series.

The nikihk words & text segments gathered from urban surfaces continue my longstanding incorporation of words & wordplay. The words present in the series contain layered meanings & double (or multiple) entendres, usually alluding to cultural practices, differences &/or colonization histories. Within this is often a wry, sometimes subtle humor.

In some pieces, I also collage colonial era settler artworks with this wall imagery, or at times with itself, reconfiguring them with/into the same kind of tribal geometries. I place a particular emphasis on using romantic landscape painting in this process, repositioning problematic notions of pristine wilderness into my femcentric First Nations abstraction practices and energies. By incorporating and/or reconfiguring this genre of landscape painting, so emblematic of Western notions of the land as beautiful but ‘wilderness’, I am aesthetically and symbolically deromanticizing it. I especially like to engage with the Hudson River School, since I’ve been based in NYC / Lenapehoking for many years, and this group were foundational in creating the colonially natured NYC museum systems (I want to clarify that my first pieces using the Hudson River school were created in 2019, since there is now an older, more established Native artist engaging with them, too, in a different and yet aligned way).

ADDITIONAL RELATED SERIES & ARTWORKS:

Words & wordplay have been an important recurring element of my work since my performance artworks of the 1990’s, like The Earth & Myself, Red Breath, Tender Trading Tipi, 10,000 years & the performative video, Holy Dog.

I began icorporating text into my sculpture, often in the form of affirmations & lines from Western songs or poems, beginning circa 2003 with braver antler & other antler series works, as well as in my early installation works, like the linguistic beadwork banner in the most beautiful things & handwritten affirmations on the dress of the faceless plains First Nations style imperfect doll in the Affirm/Nation series. The works Words of a Feather & The Definition of Bear (circa 2005-2007) in the Between the Lines series also center roles, relationships & dicotomies between Indignenous & English language.

Natura Directus et Delectabilis sculpture series also features wordplay in combination with land-gathered materials in both true root, with its Shakespearean line, & gratitude code root mural‘s multilingual affirmation in Plains Cree, English & binary code.

My 2007 Indigenous Metropolis/Immigrant Wilderness series (created for the Grace Space, Brooklyn solo exhibition of the same name & year) also features works incorporating urban imagery & iconography into/onto Native cultural elements & practices, as well as related street-gathered words & wordplay.

The wahkohtowin series and Nia Lova works are other examples of my reconfiguration of archival colonial imagery. The latter series also incorporates my wall photos.

Due to repeated unsanctioned appropriation of signature elements of my work, in the interest of protecting work in vulnerable stages of development, I now keep my newest pieces on a private page until they, and/or other closely related works, have been seen in public venues and/or by my peers and/or arts professionals in a context where there is a public record of the production and timeline of signature elements and artworks in my practice.

Feel free to contact me for more info about this.

Interested curators, collectors or other arts professionals may also contact me to request access to private work webpage/s at winter@winter-brown.com.

Hiy hiy,
Bebonkwe ᐱᐳᐣ