Collection(s) : Encounters
Paru le 04/01/2021 | Broché sous jaquette 126 pages
Tout public
Artist Gary Hill (born 1951) met Indigenous American Martin Cothren (1960-2016) from the Yakama Indian Reservation while looking for subjects for his 1996 video installation Viewer. Their encounter slowly morphed into an ambivalent friendship of otherness-a twenty-year saga encompassing creative exchange and a myriad of extreme emotions and states of mind ; a scribbled journey through serial frustration, generosity, paranoia, forgiveness, and deep sorrow. Perhaps the meaningfulness of their connection is an unspoken one.
Nevertheless, the encounter herein becomes a vaguely linear play with living memory constructing a fluctuating space of drawings and hand written letters intercut with prose in which these two particular human beings continue to manifest kinship.
Gary Hill is an American cross-disciplinary artist who has worked with sculpture, sound, video, installation and performance since the early 1970's. He continues to wander through an array of philosophical and perceptual conundrums ranging from the physicality of language and synesthesia to ontological space and viewer interactivity.
Martin Cothren a Native American from the Yakama Nation was a fisherman by trade and a skilled artist that worked with pen and ink depicting traditional Native iconography. The drawings gained in complexity during multiple stints in prison where he also learned the art of beading. Although deep down a spiritual person, he was unable to break the recidivist's trap. His last chance with freedom saw him die homeless on the streets of Anchorage, Alaska on June 4, 2016.
