Description of Work

The Revelation Booth - 2021 - Plywood, xerox transfer, polycrylic, acrylic paints - Not for Sale

Artist's Statement

The disenfranchisement of native people can be pinpointed countless times throughout history; from the government walls and treaty loopholes, to the prioritization of pipelines and oil. The Indigenous community, and their living areas, are compensated for corporate economics and political gain, yet not seen as an equal. The Revelation Booth serves as an epitome to bring an understanding to the viewers outside of the Indigenous Community to understand their privilege, to see the hardships, confusion and solemness through the installation and create this self-aware feeling, to call to change the viewer’s perspectives, to be motivated to change their own thinking.

Native American communities are still alive and relevant today; we are not just simple text in history books or objects and costumes for appropriation. We are not a category that is labeled “OTHER or SOMETHING ELSE” on election percentages or document papers. We are Native, we are human.This is the importance for creating the Revelation Booth. The Revelation Booth immerses the viewer in their own internal thinking yet provides external context to language, type, digital screens and voices.

The typography of Cherokee and English alphabet fusion elevates the coercion of my own heritage, how I never learned the language of my ancestors and felt the pressure of outside change to modernity, while also helping the outside communities understand what is being relayed through the English language. All the while the creation of the booth elevates this enclosed space of closed-off surrealism. In irony, the Native American community is often left in confusion, isolation or abandoned. The Revelation Booth shifts that perspective on the majority.

Artist's Website: www.jessiewal10.com

If you wish to purchase any of these pieces, please contact the gallery director, Jacqueline Nathan (jnathan@bgsu.edu.)