Cannupa Hanska Luger doesn’t create an installation and then decide where to put it, he figures out where it’s going and uses the space to inform the installation. He says, “You can either lean into the existing flow and movements or you can disrupt it, and I’ve always found that it’s a lot easier to find the natural movement of the space and adapt to the environment.”
The artist—who is an enrolled member of the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold and is of Mandan, Hidatsa, Arikara and Lakota heritage—has a new installation that comes in the form of Speechless, an exhibition at the Nevada Museum of Art that opens October 7.
Joint Chiefs of Staff, 2023, ceramic, steel, leather, fur, fir, repurposed speaker boxes, repurposed military lockers, synthetic hair, hand-blown glass and paint, 11 x 4 x 3’
“I arrived at the Nevada Museum of Art in the fall of 2021, and Cannupa was one of the first people I knew I wanted to work with,” says senior curator of contemporary art Apsara DiQuinzio. She’d recently seen his New Myth show at Garth Greenan Gallery and was blown away. “It was very sci-fi, and very beautiful, and I could immediately sense his ambition and knew that he was somebody I wanted to work with.”
In Speechless, Luger examines the idea of a “cargo cult” through a modern, Indigenous lens. A cargo cult is a phenomenon that occurred in the South Pacific after World War II. The United States and Europe built infrastructure and dropped cargo on the small islands to shore up their resources in the Pacific Theater, and when the war was over, they left, often leaving their cargo behind.
Wealth, 2023, ceramic, synthetic hair, ammunition can, steel and artificial sinew, 24 x 14 x 12”
Displaced, SITE Santa Fe, Santa Fe, NM (installation view).
In their wake, small cults sprang up around the infrastructure that remained. “The Indigenous people started building their own versions of things like refrigerators, radio towers and airstrips using the materials they had available,” DiQuinzio says. “They incorporated what they saw into their own rituals. The cargo cult is a result of domination and colonization and the encounter between two cultures that were previously unfamiliar with each other.”
The most famous example was documented in David Attenborough’s series The People of Paradise, which depicts the people of Tanna who worship a mythic figure known as “John Frum.” But as Luger points out, “These cargo cults are almost always described from a Western perspective. I’m trying to recontextualize the narrative by presenting the work in a contemporary—and potentially future—space. What is the advancement of technology actually for?”
Greed, 2021, ceramic and mixed media, 15 x 26 x 19”
Department of the Interior, 2023, ceramic, steel, synthetic hair, hand-blown glass, repurposed speakers, repurposed industrial felt and paint, 7 x 8 x 3’
DiQuinzio says, “Cannupa has really flipped the Western gaze back on itself and pointed out that we’re all essentially living in a cargo cult.” The Indigenous people of the South Pacific worshipped the foreign objects left behind, and now, many of us have created rituals around technology and consumption.
The exhibition space at the Nevada Museum of Art will be an aesthetic reproduction of a cargo cult with a special focus on technology. Luger says, “Rather than communicating to each other through radio waves, I’m thinking about what it looks like to communicate to something greater using those same forms and how communication has changed over time in relationship to technological development.”
Central to the exhibition is a large “radio tower” built out of a lodgepole pine, which will be surrounded by a series of repurposed and reproduced speakers. While none of the speakers make a sound, presented together, they speak volumes to viewers. Luger has also created a series of teepees made out of the same high-visibility reflective material that’s often seen on construction vests. “Those will be presented along the wall, open, but also closed,” he says.
Bureau of Land Management, 2023, media ceramic, perforated steel, repurposed industrial felt, repurposed speaker box, fir and synthetic hair, 10 x 3 x 2’
Bureau of Land Management, 2023, media ceramic, perforated steel, repurposed industrial felt, repurposed speaker box, fir and synthetic hair, 10 x 3 x 2’
Luger sees his installations as double-edged experiences. “I do build them with the knowledge that they will eventually become compartmental. There are individual pieces that, when they are in proximity to one another, become immersive, but on their own, they still have a story to tell,” he says. “But I am also aware that the vast majority of people who are visiting the space are going to experience the work as a shole. So I’m thinking a lot about the rhythm. How do these pieces relate to each other? What’s the story in between the work? Where is there visual silence?”
Influence, 2023, radio interface, repurposed industrial felt and yarn, 10 x 15 x 8”
He’s cognizant of the fact that when he’s working in museums, he’s dealing with some of the most expensive real estate on the planet, and he wants to use the opportunity to take up physical space. “I don’t see the museum as being a pedestal for the work. I think of the work existing in that space long before the museum ever existed. The museum is built around and on top of our stories, so we need to think about how we can bring those stories to life and make them visible,” he says. “I think that has a lot to do with why I chose to use those high-visibility teepees as part of the structure of the show. I’m not putting the teepee up in a museum— they built a museum around where we had teepees.”
October 7, 2023- March 10, 2024
Speechless Nevada Museum of Art, 160 W. Liberty Street, Reno, NV 89501 (775) 329-3333, www.nevadaart.org
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