Seven stacks of tires painted in fluorescent colors. A giant piñata hanging from the ceiling. A trio of saddles adorned with cool car accessories. They are all part of Desert Knight exhibition at the Phoenix Art Museum, conceived as an exploration of the “relationships between landscape, transportation, and identity” in the American Southwest.
The exhibit features work from a dozen Latino and Indigenous artists working in sculpture, painting, photography, video and more. Some take inspiration from lowrider culture, and some work using actual car parts.
Entering the gallery, viewers first see a sweeping diagonal cascade of small-scale Hummer-style cars suspended from the ceiling. Created by Margarita Cabrera using vinyl, yarn and model parts, the installation entitled “Agua que no has de beber déjala correr” (“Water you shouldn’t drink, let it flow”) (2006–2022) speaks to the exploitative practices of work is subject to the luxury car market.
Nearby, an installation titled You’re Skating on Native Land (2022) examines the ways in which producers of non-native culture exploit native land for their own benefit, while focusing on the larger context of colonization and the perspective that everything is native land. Created by Douglas Miles (San Carlos Apache-Akimel O’odham), the installation includes 30 Apache skateboards, along with hand-painted portraits of people in his San Carlos Apache Indian community.
For some artists, satire is the medium of choice.
With his 1971 fiberglass resin and epoxy sculpture “Trail’s End (with Electric Sun),” Luis Jiménez counters the narratives of the Old West embodied by James Earle Fraser’s iconic bronze statue depicting a Native American bent over his horse as if resigned to defeat. Jiménez’s heroic indigenous figure rides confidently on a horse with glowing red eyes and a red handprint on his arm.
Elsewhere, Justin Favela satirizes Seven Magic Mountains (2016), a public art installation by New York-based artist Ugo Rondinone that includes seven brightly painted stone totems installed in the desert near Las Vegas. Favela created “Seven Magic Tires” (2022) using tires donated by Discount Tire, which adds another layer of meaning.
The tire company was founded by Bruce Halle, a Latin American art collector and museum patron who died in 2018. In 2016, Latino advocates boycotted the business after stores posted signs supporting the re-election of Sheriff Joe Arpaio, citing sheriff supports controversial anti-immigrant legislation. (This did not make the text panel on the museum wall.)
Another work made with rubber tires and gold leaf prompts reflection on the ecological and cultural implications of extraction. It’s Betsabeé Romero’s “Columna Interminable (Endless Column)” (2015), a monumental sculpture made by stacking 17 tires of various sizes inscribed with symbols drawn from ancient cultures, including the Aztecs of ancient Mexico and the Hohokam of ancient Arizona.
Cuban-born documentary photographer and visual anthropologist Carlotta Boettcher trains her eyes on cultural, social and historical considerations. A row of prints from it car series (1996-1997) shows abandoned vehicles in New Mexico landscapes where they are merging with natural elements from barren trees to muddy waterways. Meanwhile, her matte black car hood, “13 Moons Doubled” (1992), mounted on a gallery wall suggests a story of thirteen moons shared by multiple native cultures.
More stories emerge in a trio of digital chromatic prints (2017–2021) by Cara Romero (Chemehuevi), a photographer whose lens amplifies cultural memory and lived experience from a Native American female perspective.
Automobiles have long been indicators of status and achievement in American culture, reinforcing the values of the dominant culture while spreading economic inequality. But here, Latino and indigenous artists use automobiles to reinforce their cultural identity and heritage while questioning the systems that enable their erasure.
For Laurie Steelink (Akimel-O’odham, Gila River Indian Community), it takes the form of “Pony” (2022), a mixed-media installation created with found objects associated with car culture that nevertheless conveys the nature of sacred horse. in indigenous cultures.
Some participating artists seek to challenge the toxic masculinity of car culture.
Jose Villalobos decorated three saddles with elements of lower culture, such as chained steering wheels, flip-up upholstery and fuzzy dice, creating his installation “QueeRiders” (2022) that speaks to his gay identity.
Sam Fresquez set synchronized driving routines filmed by drone in a parking lot to ballet music for “Driving Synchronized No. 1” (2022). Like the exposed fire suit and the automobile gloves she has covered in seed beads, the video counters the machismo that Fresquez associates with NASCAR culture.
At the back of the exhibition space, viewers see Liz Cohen’s iconic Trabantimino (2002–2010), a hybrid vehicle she built using a modified Cold War-era Trabant, GM parts and hydraulics. It is surrounded by numerous lithographs and color ink prints from Cohen’s “Stories Best Told by Others” series paying homage to the women who modeled for the cover of Lowrider Magazine.
The museum is also showing her C-print “Lowrider Builder and Child” (2012), a self-portrait taken with her child at her breast, and a video titled “Hydro Force” (2012), which shows Cohen using hydraulics to order her. built lowrider while wearing a bikini and knee-high gladiator sandals during the ninth month of her first pregnancy.
Seeing Fresquez’s exhibition work alongside Cohen is particularly powerful because it highlights the different ways emerging and established artists in the Southwest are exhibiting hybridized identities and changing conversations about social and cultural expectations for Latinos and Indigenous peoples.
A final pair of works on display, including a small oil painting by Chicano Art Movement pioneer Frank Romero (“Study in Red,” 1980) and a low-riding scale piñata from Favela and hanging from the ceiling (“Gypsy Rose Piñata”, 2022), suggests the ways in which new generations of artists are bringing their voices to conversations about identity, land, movement and migration.
Desert Knight continues at the Phoenix Art Museum (1625 North Central Avenue, Phoenix, Arizona) through September 18. The exhibition was curated by Gilbert Vicario, Phoenix Art Museum’s curator of contemporary art.
Editor’s note, 8/19/22, 2:51 pm EDT: An earlier version of the article misspelled “Akimel-O’odham”. It has been corrected.
