TitleDetention at the Border of Language
Artist
Enrique Chagoya
(American, b. 1953)
Date2019
MediumColor lithograph on handmade amate paper
DimensionsUnframed: 22 x 30 in.
SignedSigned on lower right in pencil, "E. Chagoya 1/9 4/6 AP"
SubmissionNA diploma presentation, August 18, 2021
Credit LineNational Academy of Design, New York, NY, Gift of Enrique Chagoya, artist
Object number2021.7
Label TextAs Chagoya stated, “In this work, I defang the stereotypes of Native Americans depicted as primitive savages in the painting by Wimar. The mask and the Mayan head team up with a third character to form a fictitious, original, trans-continental Border Patrol. This work is a humorous reminder that all nations in the Americas were created by undocumented immigrants from Europe. Today, some politicians call refugees from Central America and other countries ‘illegal aliens’ but for me, they are no different from the Pilgrims or Daniel Boone’s daughter. Xenophobia goes against the spirit of this great country I immigrated to and adopted as my home when I became an American citizen.” A German-born immigrant to the United States, Charles Wimar (1828-1862) painted The Abduction of Daniel Boone's Daughter by the Indians, 1853 (Kemper Art Museum), while working in Düsseldorf with the famed history painter Emmanuel Leutze. Fascinated by the American frontier, Wimar focused during this period on images of Native American conflicts with settlers, in particular the themes of captivity and abduction. These themes appeared widely in the popular literature and visual arts of the 18th and 19th centuries, in which it was fashionable to mythologize the struggles of the frontier with exotic portrayals of the West and Native Americans. Wimar's painting, like others of the time, reinforces notions of Native Americans as savage and white settlers as cultivated and divinely ordained—a notion that helped justify white colonization of the West. Inspired by Daniel Bryan's epic poem The Mountain Muse, Wimar depicted three natives seizing Jemima Boone as she picks wildflowers along the Kentucky River. Also drawing on traditional religious imagery, Wimar portrayed the captive young woman in the pose of a praying saint or martyr, further suggesting the piety and innocence of Christian Europeans and the aggressiveness and barbarity of Native Americans.
Collections
- New Acquisitions 2021
- Past as Prologue Part I
