Consumer Symbols/A Glass Order

In The 500 Year Itch (1992), Shelley Niro co-opts the highly circulated, and often venerated, icons of mainstream culture in a subversion of the commodifying gaze; Lori Blondeau’s COSMOSQUAW (1998) persona, carefully situated at the intersection of feminine performance, Indigenous vernacular and colonial realities, populates magazine covers and dreamy domestic settings; in selections from the photographic series Modern Nomads (2002), Marja Helander captures the interface between multiple identities against the backdrop of neighbourhood grocery stores frozen landscapes; and Thirza Cuthand weaves complex, fluctuating personal narratives into the archetype of the television infomercial in 2 Spirit Introductory Special $19.99 (2015).

To varying degrees, these examples operate in proximity to the symbols of consumer culture. Magazine covers, celebrity status, supermarket shelves, television infomercials: the signals that guide and often anticipate decision-making in the capitalist consumer spectacle. Neither the existence nor the analysis of a symbolic order within consumer society is a particularly novel concept, nor is it one I intend to grapple with here. My concern lies with the diverse relationships to these symbols highlighted through specific examples of work by the five contemporary Indigenous artists listed above. While all these artists invoke dialogue with consumer culture, multiple positions, strategies and outcomes are revealed upon closer inspection.

The chronological order of my analysis, from 1992 to 2015, can be criticized on several fronts. Most obviously, the repertoire of consumer symbols has drastically changed over this time span. Magazine advertising seems comparatively passive next to the highly-targeted, individualized advertising that saturates social media platforms. Artists’ work will change over a given time period provided that the referents of their critique change as well. While true, the focus here lies not with an analysis of the referent, but with articulating the nature of the relationship between artwork and referent: the characteristics of the pathway between two nodes.

Timelines also imply an historicism grounded in diachronic movement. While this claim would demand (much) further research, it is not a position I take here. The selected artists all continue to produce captivating and enduring bodies of work, and the chosen examples are as poignant and powerful today as in their time of creation. Discussion of the artists’ varied engagements with consumer culture is a theoretical, not historical, account.

Identifiable strategies in relation to the symbols of consumer culture have emerged in the last three decades, not as exclusive categories, but as points of emphasis. Imagined as something concrete and whole, the symbolic order is fragmented and reconfigured in the work of contemporary artists. Niro and Blondeau rupture and deconstruct, opening hegemonic cultural codes to Indigenous realities and colonial contexts; Helander navigates a field of particulates at the interface of Indigenous identity and consumer activity; while Cuthand sifts through an expanded repertoire of signifiers, creating new meaning out of diverse arrangements.¹ Articulating a range of approaches counters tendencies to bracket diverse practices by criteria of reference or allusion, and offers more focused commentary on the relationship between contemporary Indigenous art and symbols of consumer culture.

In The 500 Year Itch, Shelley Niro² deconstructs pop culture iconography by Indigenizing and reclaiming the commodifying gaze. The image parodies the iconic film still of Marilyn Monroe, her white dress lifted in the updraft of a street-grade vent in Billy Wilder’s film The Seven-Year Itch (1955). In Niro’s recreation, the artist stands as subject, sporting a white dress, high-heeled shoes, golden jewelry, and curly platinum blonde hair à la Monroe. These attributes stand as the signifiers of hegemonic feminine performance that formulate a symbolic order in consumer culture, representing desire bought and sold.

In the photograph of Monroe, one notes the male photographer with camera drawn under the lift of the icon’s dress. The implication is clear: archetypal (archaic) femininity as a commodifiable object of the gaze. Niro subtly levels this imbalance by the inclusion of a remote shutter release in her right hand, indicating to the viewer that the gaze is hers alone, reclaiming agency in a critical dissection of the established order. The commercial-grade fan elevating her dress relocates the subject from the realm of theatrical glamour and repositions her within everyday, lived experience. And, most essentially, Niro conspicuously fractures spaces once reserved for white femininity through the inclusion of her Indigenous body.

In an interview with Becky Rynor, Niro discussed her desire to deconstruct the way Indigenous people are viewed:

The portrayal of Indigenous people has always been such that it has been a commodity to how the land is looked at. Marketing has used that image to its own advantage. So, the image of Indigenous people has been limited. And when that image is deconstructed people don’t know how to accept it and can’t see beyond its limitations.³

The 500 Year Itch operates not only as a deconstruction of a hegemonic symbolic order, but as a rebuke of constraining, commodified versions of Indigeneity that populate consumer imaginations.

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Lori Blondeau⁴ employs a similar approach through multiple manifestations of COSMOSQUAW, a glamorous performance persona who disrupts popular narratives of feminine performance, consumer fantasy and Indigenous identity. Most recognizable as the covergirl in COSMOSQUAW (1996), a lightbox image that parodies the popular magazine Cosmopolitan, Blondeau has also featured her persona in video-documented performances of the same title. In the performance, a lounge chair, side table, and small dinner table set with a wine bottle, glassware, cigarettes and ashtray are flooded in pink stage lighting. As COSMOSQUAW enters, a song announces the performance’s beginning: “Take me out to the Black Hills / the Black Hills of Dakota / To the beautiful Indian country that I love.” In many ways, Doris Day’s “The Black Hills of Dakota” acts as both filter and metaphor for the performance to follow. Day’s care-free, idyllic reminiscing of “Indian country” is at odds with the realities of alcoholism, racism and harmful cultural codes addressed by Blondeau. (When considering that Day’s title character in Calamity Jane (1953), the musical film that first featured the song, is a gunslinging frontierswoman, this incongruence is exacerbated.)

Day’s romantic musings of the Black Hills also emphasize an important tactic in the maintenance of a symbolic order within consumer society: to reassert the static, essentialized image of an entity to maintain its saleability as a commodity. Void of oppressive histories and damaging colonial legacies, “beautiful Indian country” becomes something desirable in the minds of consumers who wish to experience a palatable version of history through commodities such as cultural tourism and souvenir kitsch. In an interview with Troy Gronsdahl, Blondeau points to this tension, noting that “the Dollar stores selling dream catchers or the stereotypical “Indian” crap, the kitschy stuff you can buy,” as testament of Indigenous people’s harmful symbolic presence in consumer culture: “Especially as Plains Indians, our image is so commodified… This doesn’t represent us.”⁵

Blondeau takes aim at Indigenous identity as something static and commodifiable. As the performance continues, her character drinks heavily from the bottle while singing Que Sera, Sera, ballroom dances with a tuxedoed gentleman, tells a childhood story of a jar of Vicks VapoRub that left her swollen lips as the crux of racist remarks (“Hey, squaw! Can I try on your lips?”) and vernacular gesture (“You’ll just be able to point over there and over there and over there”), and reads aloud instructional articles from Cosmopolitan on flirtation and seduction. The work concludes with Blondeau’s character fantasizing the items – the symbols – of fame and status. Adorned with a tiara while being hand-served champagne, cigarettes, cocaine and fresh fruit, she pridefully basks in her newfound luxuries before they are swiftly taken from her at the performance’s conclusion.

Consumer symbols are dissolved into a complex web of Indigenous identity that points to trauma, substance abuse and racism, among others, as lived experience. COSMOSQUAW also forces the viewer, as Len Findlay asserts, to “inhabit and empathize with the ambiguities of Aboriginal women passing in white society and also with all women who have to pass in patriarchal societies.”⁶ Blondeau exposes a reality that is too complex, too fragmented, and too layered to coexist alongside singular consumer narratives. Both she and Niro draw on a wide range of cultural signifiers through positions that are largely oppositional, set on obliterating a harmful symbolic order and opening it up to complex realities of Indigenous identity. COSMOSQUAW epitomizes this position early in the performance, when the audience’s gaze is accusingly addressed: “What the fuck are you looking at? You don’t know me.”

Marja Helander⁷ exemplifies a shift in position in her work of the early 2000s. Whereas Niro and Blondeau set out to disintegrate the existing order, Helander exerts a relationship to the symbols of consumer culture centered on navigation and negotiation in a multivalent environment. Most emblematic of this predicament is the Modern Nomads photographic series that conspicuously points to the interface between Indigenous identity and mainstream consumer lifestyles.

Helander’s Go-between, Inari (2002), pictures a woman dressed in traditional Sámi attire, her blue woolen dress and red cap standing in stark contrast to her surroundings: a typical supermarket aisle flooded in a wash of fluorescent lighting. As the viewer scans the cracker boxes and bread bags lining the shelves, the subject’s performative gesture is mimicked. As the woman reaches for an item to place in her shopping cart, the image captures the decisive moment where competing symbols of consumer culture are negotiated and scored. The image also condenses a moment where the push-and-pull between traditional Indigenous ways of life and consumer-driven urban lifestyles are distilled into mundane gesture. Her clothing represents a link to traditional Indigenous knowledge that comes into contact with, or perhaps become jeopardized by, contemporary urbanization. The commercial setting in conjunction with the subject’s expression suggests heightened pressure to conform to economic activity where isolation is the probable outcome.

Helander exhibits relationships to symbols of consumer culture that emphasize wayfinding over destruction. The nature of this relationship implies a greater number of outcomes at the individual level, where personal beliefs, identities and values affect one’s position. Whereas the previously discussed position sought to rupture the existing order, Modern Nomads shows the individual moving through a field of particulates, negotiating complex and diverse narratives.

Another relationship exists that is not easily distinguished from the first two described above. While it maintains elements of assault on and navigation of the prevailing symbolic order, it takes less of a position rooted in these functions, focusing more on sifting, extracting and manipulating a body of consumer symbols whose fragmentation is a given.⁸ This strategy manifests in a wide range of artistic form due to the great variability built into this mode of production. Further, this relationship to consumer symbols often extends past the symbols of mainstream consumer culture and into an infinite well of referents sourced from the internet, social media, subculture, and counter-culture, among others. The order is fragmented and extensive.

Although many artists exhibit this type of relationship to consumer culture, Thirza Cuthand⁹ provides numerous examples of how this strategy might operate. When looking through her body of work, one becomes aware of the gamut of symbols and archetypes cunningly referenced and manipulated. In Just Dandy (2013), a tale of a romantic relationship is read from a personal diary in a video performance, infused with fairy tale monikers (“Her Majesty the Evil Queen”), colonial power inequities, and the difficulties of air travel and customs, while the film You Are A Lesbian Vampire (2008) provides a sobering and candid version of the complications of romantic relationships as a vampire. In the film, a warning that “if this is a mistake, if this isn’t forever, then you’ll be spending until the end of time in the Netherworld with your ex,” exhibits a pragmatism in stark contrast to the teenage vampire romances that saturated popular film and literature at the time.

The symbols of consumer culture are most apparent in her film 2 Spirit Introductory Special $19.99 (2015). Anchored in the archetype of the television infomercial, the film promotes a fictional telephone information service for two-spirited individuals. Set against green-screen images of prairie landscapes, Cuthand extracts and collages a range of symbols and narratives, both personal and popular: free promotional items such as non-slip lube mats and beaded whisks to subscribing customers (“perfect for DIY spankings and whipping up eggs the morning after your first snag”); customer testimonials that highlight the many ways the service has helped; and, of course, the exciting “call now!” and “all for the low, low price of $19.99,” all instantly recognizable to anyone familiar with daytime or late-night television. While recognizable and humorous, the film also posits a serious issue that exists for those who are unable to discuss or seek advice from those around them, and the feelings of isolation that can arise because of this.

Cuthand’s work plumbs the depth of cultural signifiers, many of which are closely tied to consumer culture. However, her careful selection and manipulation seems less focused on the assault of mainstream symbolic codes, instead opting to utilize disparate and diverse signifiers to contemplate – and sometimes celebrate – a fragmented symbolic order. The diversity of referents and artistic production in her body of work is testament to this fact. For example, the language of the television infomercial, while recognizable, may seem anachronistic when considered against dominant modes of advertising; we might not see this as a symbol that needs to be interrogated. Yet, this move is emblematic of a process that revels in careful sifting and combination of symbols, yielding surprising new possibilities.

Imagined as a pane of glass, interactions with the symbolic order take concrete form. Those who seek to rupture the order participate in a breaking of the pane, their sights set on fragmentation. Among those shards, another strategy emerges: to navigate what has been broken and contemplate the complexities of this movement. Finally, pieces are sifted and selected to be reimagined and collaged as new and diverse compositions. This, I know, is a drastic oversimplification. It also implies that these phases must happen in a tidy order. However, these positions can be held simultaneously as the pane continues to fragment, disrupting perceived lineage. Perhaps it offers a pseudo-theoretical approach to understanding both a current artistic lineage, and the possibilities of new forms and positions yet to come.

Thank you to the all the artists who were giving of their time in sourcing images, and for allowing me to discuss their work.

Biography

Notes

Cole Thompson is an emerging arts writer and curator from Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan. He lives and works in Saskatoon, Canada.

1. This description is indebted to Lane Relyea’s discussion of the canon as a ruins to sift through in Your Everyday Art World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2013).
2. Shelley Niro is a member of the Six Nations Reserve, Bay of Quinte Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) Nation, Turtle Clan. She resides in Brantford, Ontario.
3. Shelley Niro in interview with Becky Rynor, “An Interview with Shelley Niro,” National Gallery of Canada, 2017. https://www.gallery.ca/magazine/artists/interviews/an-interview-with-shelley-niro.
4. Lori Blondeau is a Cree / Saulteaux / Métis artist from Gordon First Nation, Saskatchewan. She resides in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
5. Lori Blondeau in interview with Troy Gronsdahl, “Along for the Ride: A Conversation with Lori Blondeau,” University of Saskatchewan College Art Galleries, 2018.
6. Len Findlay, “Lori Blondeau: Cultural Portage and the (Re)Markable Body,” Lori Blondeau: who do you think you are? (Saskatoon: Mendel Art Gallery, 2006), 20.
7. Marja Helander is of Sámi and Finnish descent. She resides in Helsinki, Finland.
8. My analysis of this position is indebted to ideas presented in Hal Foster’s Bad New Days: Art, Criticism, Emergency (New York: Verso Books, 2015), and Lane Relyea’s Your Everyday Art World (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2013).
9. Thirza Cuthand is of Plains Cree and Scots descent, and a member of Little Pine First Nation. She resides in Toronto, Ontario.

This article is published in issue 35.3 of BlackFlash magazine. Get this issue