AFA 22nd Anniversary

22nd Anniversary 80 www.afamag.com | w ww.incollect.com T. C. Cannon (Kiowa and Caddo, 1946–1978), Indian with Beaded Headdress, 1978. Oil on canvas, 52 x 46 inches. Museum purchase (2015.35.1). ©The Estate of T. C. Cannon. Courtesy of the Peabody Essex Museum. T. C. Cannon is one of the most inventive Native artists in America. Witty, thoughtful, and sensitive, Cannon came of age in the socially and politically turbulent 1960s and 1970s. Cannon liberated his figures from the romanticized past and created a new present and future for them. Mass media, pop culture, the art world, and film and fashion industries have misrepresented Native people for centuries. Instead, Cannon depicts his people on his own terms, disrupting outdated, oversimplified portrayals. Cannon contrasts the elder warrior in traditional regalia with the modern aluminum folding lawn chair in which he sits, waiting for his dance at a pow wow. The mood Cannon captures in his expression and posture reads like a nineteenth-century photograph except for his seat and the vivid palette of his Southern Straight dance ensemble, the bright sky, and smudgy green grass. In Cannon’s expression, time is not always linear but cyclical. Through dance and song, he sees ancestral ties renewed, affirming that the past is always present.