(NO)stalgia
Cannupa Hanska Luger, 2020
Ceramic, repurposed materials
10' H x 5' W x 8' D

Nostalgia, n. from Greek, nostos ‘return home’ algos ‘pain’: 

A wistful or excessively sentimental yearning for return to some past period or irrecoverable condition.
The past is a construct of the mind and yet we pull from this place an idea of who we are. I will not tell you who i was, I will tell you who I am...now. 

The deer represents a life destroyed by empty nostalgia. 

Nothing is harvested, all is waste.

"A responsibility to material used exists in the customs of my people. Care must be exhibited to be in right relationship with the plants, animals, and minerals. Indigenous protocols are maintained by our cultures' relationships to the land and have been practiced from time in memorial. As an Indigenous person alive today, I have been displaced from the land of my people and with that the practices of a subsistence lifestyle. I do not hunt and gather in the fashion of my ancestors. I primarily exhibit the traits of a consumer, learned from generations of forced assimilation. However, as an artist, I believe I can continue my ancestral protocols and adapt new material that better expresses the relationships of my elders. I can easily purchase customary material such as tanned leather, however, being removed from the process, I can’t personally know of the care the animals experienced in their life or death. So I choose material that exhibits the virtues of care I can readily find. I hunt in second hand stores for knitted or crocheted blankets. Knowing that the effort to create these blankets is a labor of love. Also their original recipients received them as gifts. The blankets are often referred to as Afghans but have become ubiquitous in U.S. culture in the 20th century. To hunt and gather these materials is to hunt and gather Americana." - Cannupa Hanska Luger