Sonny Assu
A Selective History
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Through large-scale installation, sculpture, photography, printmaking, and painting, Sonny Assu merges the aesthetics of Indigenous iconography with a pop-art sensibility. This stunning retrospective spans over a decade of Assu's career, highlighting more than 120 full-color works, including several never-before-exhibited pieces.
Through analytical essays and personal narratives, Candice Hopkins, Marianne Nicolson, Richard Van Camp, and Ellyn Walker provide brilliant commentary on Assu's practice, its meaning in the context of contemporary art, and its wider significance in the struggle for Indigenous cultural and political autonomy. Exploring themes of Indigenous rights, consumerism, branding, humor, and the ways in which history informs contemporary ideas and identities, Sonny Assu: A Selective History is the first major full-scale book to pay tribute to this important, prolific, and vibrant figure in the contemporary art world.
Sonny Assu
We have chosen to accompany each poem with artwork from a contemporary Native American artist. Some of these artists are members of the same nation as the person featured in the biographical poem. Their works illustrate contemporary concepts and concerns--many of which are the same as or similar to those of their ancestors. Other poems are accompanied by a Native American artist from another nation whose work connects to the subject of the biography in an important way. Our hope is that these works of art will expand the reader's view of Native American art and reveal how vibrant and significant it is in continuing and reflecting the hopes and struggles of Native Americans today.
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