Double Vision:

Exhibition Subtitle

New Works by Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie

This exhibition is presented through the collaboration between the C.N. Gorman Museum and the Great Plains Art Museum at University of Nebraska, Lincoln.  As part of the UNL’s Geske Lecture series, the exhibition was intended to address arts, history and the regional influence of the Great Plains.  The lecture provided the opportunity to examine their permanent collections and expand the dialogue beyond the archive by working with renown photographic artist, Hulleah J. Tsinhnahjinnie (Tuskegee/Diné) to create a series of new works derived, and exhibited alongside, the photographic archives of the Great Plains Art Museum.

When we began to work together on the series, we poured over hundreds of collections image files and multiple database lists. The search was narrowed down to works by Laton Alton Huffman and William Henry Jackson.  Through the portal of digital technologies Tsinhnahjinnie transports the sitters of these vintage photographs through time, space and technologies.  In their original form, the images are printed as carte-de-visites, cabinet cards, stereopticons, and real photo cards.  Their transformation in size from a few inches to up to five feet in size and the infusion of vibrant colors from a muted sepia-toned palette renders the figures to be undeniably present. 

She further liberates the images from the fixity of photographic paper by producing them on shimmering poly-satin fabric.  Mounted inches off the wall, the pieces and subjects seem to be in movement, gently wafting with the breeze of passing by.  Paying homage to the Bison and in respect for the peoples of the Plains, she gives voice, agency and presence to the figures to serve as a protagonist. 

Tsinhnahjinnie’s works in this series provide an Indigenous perspective from a personal and political response to the archives.   The works validate the critical importance of archival materials as evidencing alternate histories when considered in a contemporary context.   From selection, to commentary and her own perspective of double vision, Tsinhnahjinnie demonstrates the partnerships between artists, curators and museums in working with archival materials and a way of bringing light to photographs perhaps long forgotten and buried deep within institutional collections.