Chapter 5 Prompt

This reading should be completed first; then, you must view photographs from Springfield Technical Community College’s Amy H. Carberry Fine Arts Gallery. Images from Canadian-born, Chicopee-based digital artist Anthony Melting Tallow’s exhibition, which was on view October 19 through November 17, 2023, show a local Indigenous artist’s work.

In this exhibition, ‘What is Your Wound?” Melting Tallow’s work confronts the wounds of the past and the immediate challenges of the present through a deep act of witnessing into the heart of contemporary Indigenous experience. His work includes aspects of Indigenous history, culture, and identity through contemporary and vintage photographs, digital imagery, and complex art installations reflecting a vibrant and enduring Indigenous culture.

As you view Anthony Melting Tallow’s exhibition, note one feature specially made for this exhibition, a monochromatic red bustle of eagle feathers, which was created on-site by Melting Tallow and is traditionally worn during a powwow on the lower back as part of an elaborate Indigenous men’s regalia. These feathers are considered sacred religious objects by Indigenous people.

Do you think the red bustle can be a sacred indigenous object AND a work of art simultaneously? Why or why not? What is the difference between object and artwork?

Anthony Melting Tallow is a member of the Blackfoot Nation of Siksika, in Alberta, Canada, a visual artist, public speaker, and Indigenous social justice advocate. Melting Tallow’s work addresses land dispossession, residential school inter-generational trauma, reframing Indigenous voices, misappropriation of native imagery, and violence against Indigenous women.