Jimmie Durham was an artist, performer, poet, activist and essayist of Cherokee origin. After graduating from university in Texas in the 1960s, he studied sculpture at the École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Geneva. In 1973, he returned to the Unites States to join other Native Americans in protests against the American government’s violation of their human rights. Two decades later, after a series of disappointments on this front, he decided to become a full-time artist. After a voluntary stint in exile in Mexico, he returned to Europe in 1994, where he eventually settled. Political and social commitment are the connecting threads in Durham’s life and work. His art was not just an expression of his Native American identity but also a form of cultural commentary. His ethnically charged visual language immediately found a place in the art world of the late 1980s, which had shifted its focus from gender to cultural diversity.
Durham combined found objects, such as old car parts, with natural materials, including branches, skulls, feathers and animal hides. He would shape these into surprising figures with human features. Basic materials were transformed by adding attributes and striking colours. Everything Durham did was coloured by his profound respect for the diversity of found materials and a desire to create connections. The artist’s pseudo-totems serve as an ironic commentary on the colonial practices of the West and urge us to rethink the clichéd way in which Westerners view non-Western art. A Dead Deer (1986, MuHKA, Antwerp) is a consummate example of his work: a slender torso of branches is crowned by the skull of a deer, painted blood red. Durham’s work bears witness to his immense historical knowledge and razor-sharp observation of cultural, linguistic, and artistic issues.
Jimmie Durham explored art’s potential to question deep-rooted cultural belief systems, particularly Western polarised thinking. He did this by unifying opposites (humans/beasts and nature/culture, for example); not to promote polarising ways of thinking, but rather to transcend them. Labelling himself an interventionist, Durham consistently explored the interplay between art and activism, the societal role of art and artists, and concepts such as citizenship. Durham’s ability to combine objects and bridge divisions is the conceptual starting point of his oeuvre. It reflects his multi-disciplinary approach to his work, which encompasses everything from poetry to politics, from drawings, collages, photos and videos to essays. Other characteristics that set Durham apart include his refined and often sardonic humour, and the layered language he uses to title his visual artworks – replete with puns, poetry, and even political profanities.
Durham’s move to Europe in 1994 had a major impact on his work. He started to use new materials, such as stone, for example. He deployed it in performances to chisel, chip away at, and change the shape of existing objects. One of Durham’s most iconic works in this respect is Still Life with Spirit and Xitle (2007), which he made by crushing a black Chrysler Spirit car with a colossal boulder. According to Durham, he wanted to liberate the rock of the immense weight of European architecture by using it to express power, prestige and triumph. Durham’s work from this period is a reject of the notion that art is related to architecture, to statues and sculptures, and to monumentality.
