Exhibition of Wonder and Place

The Concept of ethno-aesthetics incorporates the source of art into its analysis. Art or Artifacts do not exist in a vacuum but are intrinsically tied to the mindsets of the people who create the art and their environment; “The local or indigenous categories through which the formal qualities of objects, activities and practices are engaged”. Ethno-aesthetics calls on the viewer to understand the source culture’s ideas of beauty, shared metaphor and ties to the world (spirituality); what makes things special to them.

Discussing ethno-aesthetic analysis takes an “awareness of and willingness to participate in indigenous aesthetic expression increasingly signifies belonging and accountability within native communities (Steven Leuthold).” To create ethno-aesthetic art, one must become part of a culture, adopt the common themes of that culture then use those motifs to communicate their personal message. By forwarding ethno-aesthetics you make people adopt a new cultures mindset and this helps preserve them. 

Without the proper background knowledge it can be difficult to understand ethno-aesthetic art. Watching the movie, The Fast Runner, in class left me wondering what was going on more often than not. I had no idea what was normal or not, so I didn't know how to pick out what was special or different about a scene, the part that gave it its meaning, because everything was different to me. However it also gave me a chance to see how they view their world. Their realities; the endless fields of snow, the stark blue-and-white of daytime, the flickering shadows and dark but being inside at night. Western films placed in Alaska always how one scene that just shows off the lights in the sky and openness and cold, but The Fast Runner did not, as for the filmmakers seeing that is an everyday occurrence one that loses its meaning into repetition, it's home and doesn't carry this wild for foreign sense of tundra but it does for us. By studying this film in trying to make sense of their sense of making special, even see what's important in the life you will never lead. It immerses you in a degree of cultural relativism, that hard to achieve otherwise.

When the idea of globalization is applied to the analyzation of art, people think of Western ideas pushing out indigenous ideas. Terms like “whitewashing” get thrown about, and the ideal Western versus indigenous are set against each other; it's one or the other. The actuality is that most cultures will go to hybridization period in which they are exposed to another culture and incorporate some of their ideas. This has likely already happened in their history. Take the lithographs of Jose Guadalupe Posasa for example. He’s work was influenced by symbols from multiple mezzo-American societies, colonial religious iconology, the style of Mexican graphic artists of the time, photographs of Casasola, foreign weeklies, and local murals. And we give all this history the title Mexican. He is truly expressing what Tomás Ybarra-Frausto calls “visual bilingualism”. I would call it “visual poly-lingualism”.

Posasa knew that art represents ideas and is not just an object, which was why he produced art to communicate his ideas to the common illiterate population. The practices of museums need to do this same thing (except that we are expected to be literate now).

Amalia Mesa-Bains champions that practices of museums goes beyond objects, it has to with ideas; cultural museums energizes themselves by being aware of what contributes to the culture and highlighting that background, telling a story with an exhibit. Being aware that there are not just two sides, that hybridization is a constant part of cultural evolution and presenting the back-stories; the ethno-aesthetic approach to art brings inanimate objects to life. 

Extra Sources:

Leuthold, Steven. Indigenous Aesthetics: Native Art, Media, and Identity. http://art.nmu.edu/stevenleuthold/personal/indigenous_aesthetics.html

The Evolution of Arts ad Cultural Arena over the Last Three Decades: A Dialogue between Amallia Mesa-Bains and Tomás Ybarra-Frausto

Ethno-aesthetic Analysis: Calavera Revolucionaria: Jose Guadalupe Posada.