About Face: Self-Portraits by Native American, First Nations, and Inuit Artists by Zena Pearlstone and Allan J. Ryan. Hardcover.

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Retail Price $75 (hardcover)
84 illustrations (73 in color);
9 1/4" X 12 1/4"
Item#A63 B1

A catalog published in conjunction with an exhibition of the same title at the Wheelwright Museum, November 19, 2005 to April 23, 2006.

The catalog includes self-portraits created over the last four decades by forty-seven contemporary indigenous artists working in a variety of media. Among those included are young, upcoming, and unpublished artists, as well as established ones such as Swentzell, Fonseca, T.C. Cannon, and Jaune Quick-To-See Smith.

Guest curators Zena Pearlstone and Allan J. Ryan, with five other essayists, introduce the portraits with seventy-five pages of text. The essayists ruminate on the nature of 185 pp, self-portraiture, trace the development of self portraits in the west from the Renaissance to the present, consider the evolution of Native American self-representation from an early focus on communal identity, and examine the emergence of individual portrayals. Among issues discussed are cultural separation, stereotypes, and the work of several individual artists, including some with idiosyncratic visions. The authors are professors, authors, and curators from throughout the United States and Canada.

Following the text are the portraits in forty-eight plates, each with commentary. References are cited at the close of the book.

. The essays and images in this volume illuminate the diversity and complexity of self- representations that interface with one another and with viewers and readers in an ongoing conversation about differences and identities.