CV120 - Jeff Thomas, Indians on Tour — Carolyn Hickey
Ciel variable 120 - Figures of Affirmation (Summer 2022)
Portfolios (Individual article, digital version)
Jeff Thomas, Indians on Tour
La salle du cartographe autochtone | The Indigenous Map Maker’s Room
— Carolyn Hickey
With the series Indians on Tour, Jeff Thomas undertook to make use of his travels to stamp an Indigenous presence in the landscape. Placed in the foreground of the image, the “Indian” figurine haunts places colonized by modern culture to mark the antecedence of an Indigenous presence. This symbolic reconquest is perhaps most strongly expressed in front of places that, though silent, were significant to Indigenous history, and Thomas’s travel notes remind us of their importance. In conversation with Carolyn Hickey, Thomas explains that he was seeking to “make the invisible visible” and to start a dialogue. “It was important for me to be able to respond to my own circumstances and ask, how does your identity survive in an urban landscape,” he says. “That was the point of the project, as an example of taking something that is tourist-like or play-like and using it as a focal point in the landscape to create a conversation.”
Details
Language : English & French
Digital Version : PDF, 7.9 Mb
Bibliographical Notice
Carolyn Hickey, “Jeff Thomas, Indians on Tour — The Indigenous Map Maker’s Room” in Ciel variable, No. 120, Montreal, 2022, p. 14-37.