Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (American, born 1940). Homeland, 2017. Mixed media on canvas, 48 x 72 inches (121.9 x 182.9 cm). Collection Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York; Bequest of John Mortimer Schiff, by exchange, 2018 (2018:12). © 2018 Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Born in 1940 at the St. Ignatius Indian Mission on her reservation in Montana, Native American artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith has been creating complex abstract paintings and prints since the 1970s. With a solid arts education (a BA in art education from Framingham State College, Massachusetts, and an MA in visual arts from the University of New Mexico), Smith forges her socio-political commentary using appropriated signs (e.g., maps of the United States), art history, and personal narratives, creating a visual language that addresses American society and Native American history. Smith has made a career as an artist, garnering many awards. She currently lives and works in New Mexico.
Homeland, 2017, belongs to a body of paintings that 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.
