Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Native American, born 1940
Homeland belongs to a body of paintings that artist Jaune Quick-To-See Smith has created since the 1990s in which she explores the intersection of identity and place through the schematic map of the United States. Here, multicolored rays and a pattern of concentric circles overlay and, in places, overwhelm conventional state-based divisions. The former emanates from a point in the northwest: the location of the Flathead Reservation in Montana where Smith grew up. In redefining the contours of the country outward from this spot, Smith counters the presumption that a nation’s “heart” should be centered in its political, financial, or cultural capitals—such as Washington, D.C., New York, or Los Angeles. In doing so, she raises questions about where we find our own centers and how we form our identities in relation to our concept of home.