Site-specificity and dislocation: Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas and his Haida Manga Meddling

• Published in: Journal of Material Culture
• Main Author: Levell, Nicola
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publications 2013
• Subjects: Arts and Humanities (miscellaneous); Archeology; Anthropology; First Nations
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1359183513486231; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1359183513486231; http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full-xml/10.1177/1359183513486231

Tracing the critical biography of Pedal to the Meddle (2007) – a Haida Manga intervention, originated by Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas – this article explores the biography of indigenized artworks that are generated as a site-specific form of institutional critique but later dislocated, mobilized and rearticulated in other disciplinary spaces. In its original context, Pedal to the Meddle was conceptualized and created to critique museum practices, the politics of ownership and First Nations’ dispossession on the Northwest Coast. However, when this artwork was dislocated from its site of origin and re-curated in other exhibitionary spaces, its indigenized critique, relational aesthetics and locational meanings were inevitably altered. It is these retellings, through the artist’s practice, different spaces, material configurations, collaborative processes and curatorial voices that constitute the subject of this article.