Connexions and condensation in the work of Jimmie Durham

Abstract

The internationally renowned artist Jimmie Durham, who now lives in Europe,
elaborated throughout his career a work of contemporary art which is profoundly rooted
in his Cherokee culture, while efficiently engaging the art world which gives him an
increasingly important place (one of the rare such Amerindian artists). His artwork
appears to combine: 1. Contemporary art devises and issues as well as western concepts
and viewpoint which he uses and assesses within pieces which are made for a (western)
art public, 2. his Cherokee perspective on objects and the world (and 3. his own
poetics). The condensation of these two perspectives within art pieces is paradoxical, for
they conceive and perceive things and relationships in the world in a priori incompatible
ways. Paralleling his work, his own identity or persona is paradoxical, in that on the one
hand he defines himself and is considered as an ‘international’ artist, therefore denying
the ethnic label which has been applied to him in his early career and which he had to
fight, and on the other hand he maintains that his only way to be is as a Cherokee. The
continuous colonisation and stereotypification of his peoples in the USA, and their
impossibility to be seen as themselves, which the artist feels deeply, cast light on his
aim to be a “homeless orphan”. Being truly a Cherokee however does not prevent his
being an “international artist”, but rather contributes to it, and vice versa.