Photographer: Nadya Kwandibens, Exhibition Series: Concrete Indians
(Photo Series: http://www.redworks.ca/portfolio-category/concrete-indians/)
(Text: http://this.org/magazine/2009/11/17/nadya-kwandibens-concrete-indians/)
Kwandibens, 30, is of Ojibwe and French heritage. She had moved to Arizona in 2005 to pursue a relationship with Native American photographer David Bernie, and that was when she first picked up a camera. Only one of those love affairs—with photography—survived. Feeling emotionally stuck in Arizona, she began to use the camera for healing: she took pictures during the day and taught herself new photography skills online at night.
This impulse to heal through art recalled the jingle-dress dancing Kwandibens had done as a teen growing up in foster care. Her biological family, with whom she had limited contact, had encouraged her to keep up the traditional Ojibwe dance; it was one of her only connections to her native culture while in foster homes, feeling isolated and lonely.
When Kwandibens returned to Canada, she turned her camera on her Concrete Indians project, a series of portraits of the urban Indian experience. She asks her subjects, “Who are you as a Native person within the city?” The resulting photos are witty, meticulous, poignant. It was this presentation of Native people in a modern, urban context that caught the eye of Ryan Rice, cofounder of Aboriginal Curatorial Collective, who was curating an installation called HOW: Engagements of the Hollywood Indian last year. Kwandibens was chosen as one of five featured visual artists in that show. “She captures an Indigenous spirit,” Rice wrote in the show’s catalogue, “and resuscitates characters overshadowed by the burden of false impression.”
Again, on the topic of trying to capture an accurate representation of Aboriginals beyond the stereotypes, we briefly discussed the significance of the Concrete Indians photo series by Nadya Kwandibens in class today. To me, this series captures the true representations of how Indigenous people can continue to find community despite the original displacement of their cultures and the explosion of urban culture. Kwandibens shows how the urban experience can be embraced and all the while holding true to ones Aboriginal cultural identity.
What do all of these photo series I have posted have in common? How are they different? What are your thoughts and feedback?