Acquisition: Jaune Quick-to-See Smith

Jaune Quick-to-See Smith
Adios Map, 2021
mixed media on canvas
overall: 127 x 203.2 cm (50 x 80 in.)
National Gallery of Art, Washington
Gift of Funds from Glenstone Foundation
2022.20.1
Jaune Quick-to-See Smith (Enrolled Salish, member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation) is one of the most celebrated and respected artists of her generation. The National Gallery of Art has recently acquired its second painting by the artist, Adios Map (2021). Smith's work has been included in over 90 exhibitions worldwide, and her generative practice has also comprised curating over 30 shows of her fellow Native artists' work, as well as teaching, writing, and editing.
Adios Map, a painted canvas with collaged elements, joins Smith's series of over 20 paintings begun in 1996 that feature a map of the United States to critique notions of sovereignty and geopolitics in relation to Native culture and the land. In this series, Smith makes a clear art historical referent to Jasper Johns' map paintings, each time applying different socio-political content to represent a Native vision and voice.
Smith's signature bricolage of expression and materials is on full view in Adios Map, featuring various iterations of the word "goodbye" written in different languages, from No Mas to Ciao. The words cascade diagonally across the United States from the Northwest Coast at top left to the peninsula of Florida at bottom right. Made in 2021, the artist remarked that the year was one of goodbyes, to all those lost in the pandemic, to the previous administration, and to the land destroyed by climate disasters, and more. In keeping with her pedagogy, the meaning of Adios Map is both specific to Native American experience, while staying open to further interpretation.
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