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August 2005
 Internationally-recognized
for his installation and performance art, James
Luna (Luiseño) does work that confronts and
challenges commonly-held stereotypes about Native Americans, museums,
art, and life, and does it with irony, humor, sorrow, and a strong
sense of story-telling in motion. Luna was selected by NMAI to
participate in the 2005 Venice Biennale with the performance installation
Emendatio. He has directed an experimental video concerned
with Native conversation and the "coffeehouse" culture
of the Beat generation, and has also been the subject of several
films about his performances and ideas, including a segment of
the 2005 PBS magazine series Race Is the Place. Luna's
performances and work have been presented at the Hemispheric Institute's
2005 Encuentro "Performing 'Heritage'" in Belo Horizonte,
Brazil; the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Swiss Institute
and the American Indian Community House in New York; National
Gallery of Art in Ottawa; Hood Museum of Art in Hanover, New Hampshire;
and San Diego Museum of Man. He is on the faculty of Palomar College
and San Diego State University, and has lectured about art at
Harvard University and other colleges. He lives on the La
Jolla Reservation, a Luiseño community on the slopes of
Mount Palomar, north of San Diego.
"There is a strategy to get people to listen to you. I used
to holler at them. These days I talk of our similarities as people
before I talk of cultural differences between us. It seems to
work better."
Screened by NMAI
Image credits: James
Luna, Emendatio Rehearsal for performance 2005 - photograph
by Katherine Fogden, Smithsonian National Museum of the American
Indian
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