Dana Claxton facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Dana Claxton
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Title wall of Dana Claxton: Spark Solo Exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art, 2024
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| Born | 1959 (age 65–66) Yorkton, Saskatchewan, Canada
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| Nationality | Hunkpapa Lakota |
| Known for | Film, performance, and photography |
Dana Claxton (born 1959) is a talented Hunkpapa Lakota artist. She creates amazing works using film, photography, and performance art. Her art explores common ideas and stories about Indigenous peoples, especially First Nations in Canada. She often challenges old ways of thinking about them. In 2007, she received an Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art for her excellent work.
Contents
Dana Claxton's Story
Her Family and Early Life
Dana Claxton's family are descendants of Sitting Bull's followers. They moved to Canada in 1876 after the Battle of the Little Bighorn to find safety. Dana grew up in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, as the youngest of four children. Her family's reserve, Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation, is in Southwest Saskatchewan.
Teaching and Making Videos
Dana Claxton helped start the Indigenous Media Arts Group. She has also taught at the Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver. In 2003, she was a special professor at the University of Regina, teaching journalism. Later, in 2010, she was a special chair in Women's Studies at Simon Fraser University.
She has worked with many Canadian and First Nations groups, like the National Film Board of Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. She directed and produced 52 episodes of Wakanheja, a children's show about First Nations. She also made 26 episodes of ArtZone, an art show for teenagers. Dana also produced and shared stories for First Stories-VTV, a program about Indigenous people in Vancouver.
Her Life Today
When Dana Claxton is not making art, she joins discussions, judges art, and helps young artists. She lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, and teaches at the University of British Columbia. She studied acting in New York City at HB Studio. In 2007, she earned a Master's Degree from Simon Fraser University.
Her Artistic Journey
Dana Claxton combines her own views with Indigenous issues from the past and present. She explores ideas about colonization, body image, beauty, politics, and spirituality. She also looks at how Native symbols are used in popular culture. Through her videos, photos, and art projects, Dana tries to mix traditional experiences with modern life.
Video Art
Dana Claxton started making video art in the early 1990s. In works like Grant Her Restitution (1991) and I Want To Know Why (1994), she explored how colonialism affected Canadian women. Starting with The Red Paper in 1996, she aimed to "bring spirit into the gallery space." She mixes sacred and everyday things, using traditional Lakota spiritual objects in modern settings. Her many video projects have been shown in over 15 countries.
Photography
In her photo series On to the Red Road (2006), Dana Claxton uses five pictures to look at femininity and clothing. The series shows a model slowly taking off traditional clothing to reveal a different outfit. This makes people think about ideas of identity and how women are seen.
Paint Up (2009) shows portraits of Joseph Paul, a Salish Black Face dancer and Pow-wow dancer. He lives on the Musqueam Indian Reserve. These large, colorful photos of Paul with his face painted are powerful. They challenge a view of modern life that is not spiritual or connected to nature.
Newer works like the Mustang Suite explore the meanings and common ideas behind "Indianness." This series includes large photos that connect to Black Elk's vision of the Horse Dance. The mustang represents freedom. In Daddy's Gotta New Ride, an Indigenous man in a suit with face paint stands next to a red Ford Mustang. Baby Girls Gotta Mustang shows twin girls in red dresses and mukluks on bicycles. Another photo, Mama Has a Pony Girl…Named History and Sets Her Free, shows a medicine woman and a Caucasian woman dressed like a "pony girl." This image supports Indigenous women who want to break free from old, unfair ideas about them. Other pictures in the series show the Indigenous community in today's world.
Claxton has also focused on the American Indian Movement. She uses large black-and-white photos of government documents about this civil rights group. She found these documents in the New York Public Library when she lived in New York City. Many words in the documents are blacked out, like in other government papers from the FBI.
Claxton's photography is also in the book #NotYourPrincess Voices of Native American Women (2017). She says her art piece Onto the Red Road is about "transformation, spirituality, and how Indigenous women are seen." When asked what it means to be an Indigenous woman, Claxton said it means to "care for your family and community with generosity, courage, wisdom, and fortitude."
Dana Claxton's solo art show, "Dana Claxton: Spark," opened at the Baltimore Museum of Art in 2024. It was part of a bigger show called Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum. Her exhibition featured large, bright, backlit color photos she calls "fireboxes." This name plays on the term "lightboxes" and shows the energy in her work, connecting to her Indigenous roots. These "fireboxes" show the beauty and strength of Indigenous women.
Important Artworks
Buffalo Bone China
In Buffalo Bone China, Dana Claxton mixes performance art, found objects, and video. She explores how First Nations people were affected by policies from colonial Great Britain about the American bison. Bison were killed, and their bones were sent to England to make bone china.
In her performance, Claxton smashes pieces of china. She then makes four bundles and places them in a sacred circle. A video of buffalo plays in the background. She uses a rubber mallet to break plates and bowls, showing the loss of the buffalo. The buffalo were very important to the Plains people's spirituality and way of life. The breaking of the china also refers to how buffalo bones were used to make bone china when the buffalo were being destroyed. Claxton only smashed British bone China.
Buffalo Bone China was shown at the MacKenzie Art Gallery in Canada from May 23 to September 13, 2009. It was also at the Vancouver Art Gallery from October 27, 2018, to February 3, 2019.
Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux
This artwork was created in 2003 and shown at the 17th Biennale of Sydney. Sitting Bull and the Moose Jaw Sioux combines landscape scenes, interviews, and images. It looks at how the Moose Jaw camp was founded by Sitting Bull after he left the United States following the Battle of Little Bighorn. The artwork has four video screens, old photos, and interviews with people who lived in the original camp. It also includes videos of the camp site.
Awards and Recognition
In 2019, the Hnatyshyn Foundation gave Dana Claxton an award for her amazing achievements as a Canadian artist. Also in 2019, she received the YWCA Women of Distinction Award for Arts, Culture, and Design. Claxton won the 2020 Governor General's Award for Artistic Achievement in Visual Arts. In 2020, she also won the Scotiabank Photography Award.
Where Her Art Is Kept
Dana Claxton's art is part of many public collections, including:
- Canada Council Art Bank
- Colby College Museum of Art, Maine
- Robert McLaughlin Gallery, Oshawa
- Vancouver Art Gallery
- Winnipeg Art Gallery
Art Exhibitions
- Dana Claxton: Spark, 2024, Baltimore Museum of Art
- Time and Tide Flow Wide, 2023, Colby College Museum of Art
- Fringing the Cube, 2018–19, Vancouver Art Gallery
- Solo show, 2010, Biennale of Sydney
- Native Visuality, 2009, C.N. Gorman Museum
- New Work, 2009, University of Lethbridge
- Steeling the Gaze, 2009, National Gallery of Canada
- Solo show, 2007, Montreal Biennale
- Eiteljorg Fellowship for Native American Fine Art, 2007, Eiteljorg Museum
- Solo show, 2006, Biennale d’art contemporain du Havre
- Solo show, 2005, Art Star Biennale
- Gatherings: Aboriginal Art from the Collection of the Winnipeg Art Gallery, 2004, Guangdong Museum of Art
- Topographies, 1996, Vancouver Art Gallery
