I Think It Goes Like This (Gold), 2019, wood, paint, gold leaf, variable dimensions, In the Art Bridges Collection.
Nicholas Galanin: I Think It Goes Like This (Gold)
Missoula Art Museum, Missoula, MT
January 19 - April 22, 2021
Visit MAM to experience the phenomenal special loan, a single-object exhibition from Art Bridges Foundation, featuring Nicholas Galanin/Yéil Ya-Tseen’s, I Think It Goes Like This (Gold). Galanin works from his experience as a mixed ancestry American/Tlingit/Unangax̂ artist to engage the complexities of contemporary Indigenous identity, culture, and representation. Galanin challenges the viewer to reassemble the pieces of a deconstructed mass-produced totem pole, manufactured in Indonesia and sold in gift shops throughout Sitka, Alaska where the artist lives, a reference to the appropriation and commodification of Native culture and decimation of Indigenous knowledge.