Dana Claxton

Dana Claxton (born 1959) is a Hunkpapa Lakota filmmaker, photographer, and performance artist. Her work looks at stereotypes, historical context, and gender studies of Indigenous peoples of the Americas, specifically those of the First Nations. In 2007, she was awarded an Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art.

Background

Heritage and early life

Claxton's family are descendants of Sitting Bull's followers who escaped persecution by the U.S. Army in 1876 after the Battle of the Little Bighorn, heading to Canada.

Teaching and video production

Claxton co-founded the Indigenous Media Arts Group and has taught at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. In 2003, she served as the Global Television Chair at the University of Regina where she taught at the school of journalism. In 2010, she served as Simon Fraser University's Ruth Wynn Woodward Chair in Women's Studies.

She has worked closely with numerous Canadian and First Nations organizations, such as the National Film Board of Canada, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, among others. She served as director and producer for 52 episodes of the Canadian program Wakanheja, a First Nations oriented children's program and 26 episodes of ArtZone, an art show for teenagers. She also served as producer and a storyteller for First Stories-VTV, a program about the Aboriginal population of Vancouver. Dana Claxton has curated for Unit/Pitt Gallery.

Current life

When not creating art, Claxton serves on panel discussions, as an art juror, curator, as well as a mentor for young and emerging artists. Claxton lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and is a faculty member at the University of British Columbia. She previously studied acting at HB Studio in New York City. She received a master's degree in Liberal Studies in 2007 from Simon Fraser University where she was made Ruth Wynn Woodward Endowed Chair in 2009–2010.

Artistic career

I'm influenced by my own experience as a Lakota woman, as a Canadian, a mixed blood Canadian, and then my own relationship to the natural and supernatural world. So taking that whole bundle of experiences, it all goes in to the artwork, I think that's where the multi-layering comes in because I've had a very multi-layered life. And it's all those experiences that go in to the work. – Dana Claxton, 2007

Claxton combines her own world-view with Indigenous issues from the past and present. She investigates concerns about colonization, body imagery, beauty, politics, spirituality and the iconography of Native peoples and how it is placed in popular culture. Through video, photography and conceptual projects Claxton strives to blend traditional experiences and environments within contemporary spaces

Her numerous video projects have been shown in more than 15 countries.

Claxton has also focused on the American Indian Movement which features blown up black-and-white photos of declassified government documents about the at times controversial civil rights organization. The documents were collected when Claxton lived in New York City in the late 1980s and early 1990s, from the New York Public Library. The reporting documents have many blacked out words, notorious of other government documents from the FBI and related organizations. The exhibition featured LED large-scale, backlit, colour photographs that she refers to as "fireboxes" as a play on the term "lightboxes" to described the energy in her work with a nod to her indigenous roots. These fireboxes she references as a testament to the beauty and resilience of Indigenous women.

Major works

Buffalo Bone China

In Buffalo Bone China Claxton blends performance art, found objects and video to dissect the effects upon First Nations peoples due to policies from colonial Great Britain regarding the American bison. Bison were slaughtered and their bones crushed and exported to England to make bone china.

In the performance Claxton smashes pieces of china and makes four bundles, placing the bundles in a sacred circle while a video of buffalo plays in the background. "Feeling the loss of the buffalo, the backbone of Plains spirituality and sustenance, the artist uses a rubber mallet to destroy plates and bowls. The breaking of the china refers to the use of buffalo bones in the making of bone china during the period of exploitation and decimation of the buffalo." Claxton only smashed British bone China.

Buffalo Bone China was exhibited at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Canada from 23 May 2009 to 13 September 2009, as well as the Vancouver Art Gallery from 27 October 2018 to 3 February 2019.

Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux

Created in 2003 and displayed at the 17th Biennale of Sydney, Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux brings together landscape scenery, interviews and images to examine the founding of the Moose Jaw camp, the camp founded by Sitting Bull after exodus out of the United States after the Battle of Little Bighorn. The piece, originally commissioned by the Moose Jaw Art Gallery, features four video screens, archival images and interviews from the camps original inhabitants, as well as footage of the site. In 2019 Claxton received the YWCA Women of Distinction Award in the category of Arts, Culture and Design. Claxton won the 2020 Governor General's Award for Artistic Achievement in the Visual Arts Category. Also in 2020, Claxton won the Scotiabank Photography Award.

Selected public collections Canada Council Art Bank Colby College Museum of Art, Maine; Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa; Vancouver Art Gallery Winnipeg Art Gallery; Dana Claxton: Spark, 2024, Baltimore Museum of Art Time and Tide Flow Wide, 2023, Colby College Museum of Art Fringing the Cube, 2018–2019, Vancouver Art Gallery Solo show, 2010, Biennale of Sydney Native Visuality, 2009, C.N. Gorman Museum New Work, 2009, University of Lethbridge Steeling the Gaze, 2009, National Gallery of Canada Solo show, 2007, Montreal Biennale Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2007, Eiteljorg Museum Solo show, 2006, Biennale d’art contemporain du Havre Solo show, 2005, Art Star Biennale Gatherings: Aboriginal Art from the Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2004, Guangdong Museum of Art Topographies, 1996, Vancouver Art Gallery