Where will we go?
"No Indians or Dogs Allowed" Neon 2008
This is a sign created for my new photo series "Where will we go?". Please go to the portfolio to view more images. A limited edition of prints will be available for purchase. For more information please contact the artist.
…on the No Indians or Dogs Allowed sign and Where will we go? series..
I have received strong and emotional response from viewers, this work is meant to evoke emotion. Prescribing a contemporary medium (neon), the sign appears in a form we could imagine seeing today if this sort of lunacy persisted. Bringing contemporary context to a familiar sight of the past (the old wooden signs with this text) might assist in translating the emotion and reality of a recent past. I do not think of this work as a statement towards current racial issues though the viewer is opened to interpret this as they’d like. Does appropriation of these sort of signs offer any resolve to an ugly part of the past? I don’t think so. They do however continue to remind us how far we’ve come as cultures living amongst other each other. These images offer a setting of absurdity and contrast with both the meaning of the sign and use of neon in such environments (primarily my cultures indigenous land).
