Land Art
Title: Land Art is Manifest Destiny (American Progress)
Created: 2023
Medium: Graphic Design
Software: Adobe Illustrator & Photoshop CC
Dimensions: 48″x36″
Article (Land Art and Manifest Destiny)
“Land art is property. It needs property to be purchased for it to sit upon, and it’s one person’s vision realized. It’s their property.”
“These mounds are a stark contrast to Michael Heizer’s recently unveiled City and other land works in progress like James Turrell’s Roden Crater and Charles Ross’s Star Axis. City seems to be an homage to functional spaces, places built collectively, but in execution, it is one white person’s vision. City was created with intention. It is geared toward art lovers, and only six of those lovers can visit per day. It is exclusive. It is a mile and a half long and is considered one of the largest artworks ever built. It’s built within the ancestral lands of the Southern Paiute and the Western Shoshone. It cost $40 million to build. It is, like most things born out of the concept of manifest destiny, set in the West, in Nevada. It is hubris in art form.
Mount Rushmore is perhaps the most hubristic of white men’s land art projects, at least in regard to Indigenous people. The monument is an affront to Lakota culture: a celebration of white men colonizers carved into a sacred area (not property) of the Lakota people, the Black Hills. Chris Eyre’s excellent film Skins (2002) addresses the offensive placement of this sculpture. A character in the film wants to blow up George Washington’s face; well, of course he would—I wouldn’t want a United States president staring down on me in my tribal territory either.”
– ALTA, The Problem with Land Art, Hurbis in Art Form.
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Download the 11″ x 8.5″ poster (.pdf), Print – Land Art is Manifest Destiny.
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Land Art
Land Art is a series of artworks by Ihanktonwan Dakota artist David Bernie that addresses issues related to land art projects, such as land ownership and being born out of the concept of manifest destiny.
Creative Commons License
This work by David Bernie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. You may download, share, and post the images under the condition that the works are attributed to the artist.
