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| Victor Masayesva / North Dakota Museum of Art |
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Amazon Tourism, 1993
Oil on Silver Print
| Amazon Tourism is a sardonic, disturbing image of spiritual ceremonies being appropriated by the cult of tourism. Using out-of-focus techniques, Masayesva photographed a weird and malevolent figure dancing in the jungle. Its looming size and inhuman dress of hides and feathers evoke a threatening and awesome quality. Nonetheless, to the far right is a painted image of a photographer with a camera. After completing the Bolivian and Australian work the artist turned his attention back to his own Hopi culture, one of the most complex and unknown in the western world. Even here the meanings are meant to be intuited rather than described |