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Chris Pappan (Kaw, Osage, Cheyenne River Sioux, born 1971)
Definition 1
2018
Graphite, map collage, and acrylic on 1925 Evanston municipal ledger
Purchase funds provided by the Andra S. and Irwin Press Collections Fund, 2021.10.1
Influenced heavily by what he calls “lowbrow art,” Chris Pappan makes work that often addresses themes such as colonialism, cultural appropriation, and the interpretation of history. In Pappan’s words, lowbrow art is “a genre of work where the technical ability is very precise, very illustrative, sometimes photorealistic, sometimes surrealistic. The subject matter is often lurid or lascivious.”
Here Pappan has rendered a detailed drawing of a man’s face on paper from a 1925 City of Evanston municipal ledger and a map of Gila River Indian Reservation lands in Arizona. The artwork addresses layered histories of place and is part of Pappan’s series 21st Century Ledger Drawings. Ledger drawings were an artistic practice developed by Indigenous people of the Plains region in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The ledger paper, originally a means for settlers to keep inventories, served as a new medium for Indigenous artists to record everyday life and contemporary events. Pappan says he likes to blend his lowbrow aesthetic with the tradition of ledger art to assert the identity of Indigenous people as modern, rather than people consigned to history. He seeks to question our perceptions of what it means to be Native, asking:
- How much information does the viewer need in order to categorize the subject as “Native”?
- Is it the context in which the work is displayed?
- Is it the substrate or materials used?
- Is it within the heritage of the maker of the work?
Reference: “Chris Pappan: Artist Narratives,” Blue Rain Gallery, brochure