Ishi Glinsky

Working in a variety of media, including painting, drawing and sculpture, Ishi Glinsky investigates the traditional practices of his tribe, the Tohono O’odham Nation, as well as other North American First Nations to create contemporary homages to sacred events and customs. These investigations often consist of a close study of the history and significance of a craft tradition, the committed apprenticeship of its technique, and its assimilation or transformation within Glinsky’s artistic practice. Each immersive installation, sculpture or painting is a fusion of intertribal celebration and resourcefulness, permanence or evolution, all of which is intimately reflected in the carefully crafted material nature and composition of a given work. A strategy common to Glinsky’s production consists of creating disproportionate shifts in scale in order to both amplify Indigenous practices and stories, and memorialize them in the form of monuments to survival.

For his presentation at Place des Vosges, Glinsky will exhibit a selection of new pieces from his ongoing inlay series. This body of work commemorates jewelry inlay techniques from Indigenous tribes of the US southwest, most notably the Zuni people of western New Mexico. Thanks to its unceremonious appropriation of classical Warner Bros. and Disney cartoon imagery, this jewelry is often referred to in markets and trading posts as ‘Zunitoons.’ Glinsky’s new sculptures variously revisit this cultural tradition, sometimes enlarging pieces of renowned creators such as the Zuni jeweler Veronica Poblano, while other times drawing on this methodology to create a self portrait or charm bracelet. Where the original jewelry is crafted from silver and semi-precious stones (mother of pearl, turquoise, coral, shell), Glinsky has developed techniques to recreate these materials at a vastly enlarged scale from welded and polished aluminum, pigment, and cast and polished resin, with stunning verissimilitude. The implications of the work and its relationship to indigenous cultural practices, Americana, popular culture, and Pop art are manifold, offering many layers of meaning and interpretation. From challenging hierarchies of art and craft to questioning the potentially exploitative origins of Americana, these sculptures also celebrate the reappropriation of an iconographic universe.