All dressed up

Philbrook’s Native Fashion Now exhibition is exuberant, expressive

Just past the edge of the Philbrook Museum of Art rotunda, I stood looking up at a dozen fabric parasols hung upside down and every which way, with subtle colors and patterns on gently curving shapes, floating in the air like levitating mushrooms.

“As far as I know, we’ve never really suspended anything from the ceiling out here!” exclaimed Christina E. Burke, Philbrook’s curator of Native and Non-Western art. 

“The artist wanted these parasols at different heights, with that kind of playful movement, not rigid and structured, but organic,” she said. 

In contrast to these dynamic forms, Philbrook’s Native art holdings, which make up two-thirds of the museum’s entire collection, are largely pottery, baskets, and paintings on skins. 

“This is unexpected,” she said. “That’s one of the things I like about the show.”

The show, Native Fashion Now, which explores contemporary Native fashion, has been up since October and runs through January 8, 2017.

As Burke walked me through the exhibit, the unexpected arrived around every curve. Floating parasols led into a shimmering, futuristic wonderland of Mylar dresses, glass jewelry, and feather headpieces created by Wendy Ponca, an Osage artist from Fairfax, Oklahoma, whose work appeared on Project Runway. 

“You see the eagle feathers and the dichroic glass, which is used on the windows of the space shuttle,” Burke explained, “and then the Mylar, which is on the one hand ubiquitous—you see it in birthday balloons at the grocery store—but also a space-age material.” 

“Why these materials?” I asked. 

“Osage society is divided into halves: Earth people and Sky people. Ponca is from the Sky moiety. She’s making a statement about her identity, not just as a Native person, but as a Sky person.  

“It’s a connection to the past but it’s also very contemporary,” Burke continued. “You see those themes again and again in this show. Native people in 2016 can be part of mainstream society and on reality shows and working in nontraditional materials. Just because you wear Nike shoes as opposed to beaded moccasins, it doesn’t mean you’re any less Native.”

Originally curated at the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts, the exhibit has traveled to Portland and now to Tulsa on its way to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian in New York. 

Individual pieces are punctuated by runway footage on video and a “Fabric Station” where visitors can touch some of the materials used in the exhibit (including a spectacular hot pink holographically-dyed lambskin). White walls and strips of bright color delineate a pathway through four sections: Pathbreakers (who have pioneered the use of Native fashion in mainstream culture), Revisitors (who use traditional materials in innovative ways), Activators (for whom design is an avenue for social engagement), and Provocateurs (who are straight-up exploding the “box” of Native fashion). 

Each section sparks with movement, humor, multilayered intelligence, and exuberant detail. Porcupine quills stab into the air around the head of the mannequin wearing Orlando Dugi’s lush poppy-orange silk and organza dress. Louie Gong’s custom-painted Chuck Taylors zing with bold pattern on a wall of plain white Chucks. Dwayne Wilcox’s “Medicine Hat” uses antique paper to tell a dizzyingly complex story about snake oil, Native traditions of healing, and Euro-American notions of worth. 

Jamie Okuma’s “Boots,” created in 2014, is a pair of Christian Louboutin stiletto-heeled boots covered with mesmerizing plant forms and swooping birds made from thousands of colorful antique glass beads. 

“Beads have become this iconic material for Native art. But they weren’t made by Native people. Glass beads were mass-produced—as Louboutins are—in Eastern Europe and traded for buffalo hide and beaver pelt. Now we think of them as traditional, but back then this beadwork was contemporary art.”

The “Provocateurs” section contains perhaps the most surprising work, with sculptural forms made from materials like steel, cedar bark, and computer parts, and a stark installation about the use and abuse of natural resources that features a black vinyl dress with a fringe that spills away from it like oil across a field.

Burke drew my attention to a black-and-white dress embellished with text that translates as “We will succeed.” 

“It’s encouragement,” she said. “It’s not a call to arms. It’s for everybody – but it is written in the Cree syllabary. Again it’s that multilayered message.” 

Many Native artists are giving talks and workshops during the exhibit; “my job,” Burke noted, “is to provide a platform for those voices to be heard.”

These aren’t items from a silent, distant past. They’re living, dynamic, fresh works of art that speak in a multitude of voices. In this year when the Native Americans at Standing Rock are also speaking out, we’d do well to take a new look at our own takes on Native identity. Native Fashion Now is a brilliant chance to listen, wonder, and be surprised. 

Jared Yazzie Trunk Show
December 14 and 15

“Native Fashion Now”
Through Jan. 8, 2017 at Philbrook Museum 

For more from Alicia, read her article on upcoming works from Tulsa Modern Movement.