Zig Jackson
Buffalo Enclosure, Golden Gate Park
(Entering Zig's Indian Reservation) #1 of 4, 1997
Estimated Value: $1,800

Gelatin silver print
14.2 x 17.8 inches
Unframed
Signed, verso
Donated by the artist, courtesy of Andrew Smith Gallery.

In Buffalo Enclosure, Golden Gate Park (Entering Zig's Indian Reservation), 1997, the artist, wearing a great feathered headdress and western clothes sits on a park bench viewing the camera with the same brazen directness that Manet's Olympia gazed at the world almost a century ago. 

Behind him a small herd of buffalo graze in a fenced off field. The large sign tells onlookers that they are entering the private property of Zig's Indian Reservation. Included in the list of rules is "No Hunting."

About the Artist:
Zig Jackson

Zig Jackson is a Native artist who uses his art to de-mythologize his own history and to break down the misguided and romanticized stereotypes of Native Americans perpetuated by popular media and folklore. In the series “Entering Zig’s Indian Reservation,” the artist, wearing a feathered war bonnet, "occupies" various locations throughout San Francisco and the west with his personal reservation sign.  Although superficially humorous, the series addresses the complex issues that confront contemporary Native Americans involving identity, land rights, indigenous sovereignty, and cultural ambiguity.   

Zig Jackson was raised on a reservation in North Dakota and is an enrolled member of three affiliated tribes: Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara.  

His work has been exhibited widely and he has been a guest lecturer and artist at Stanford University and The Smithsonian Institution. After attending the photography program at the University of New Mexico, Jackson moved from rural New Mexico to San Francisco, an experience he later described as profoundly alienating. He articulated his feelings of isolation and the need to claim a space for himself in a series of silver print photographs titled “Entering Zig's Indian Reservation.”   

Each photograph was taken at a well-known site around San Francisco where Jackson stood next to an official looking sign with the words,  "Entering Zig's Indian Reservation," followed by a list of rules. Wearing a full Indian headdress and sunglasses, Jackson "occupies" a world whose culture and belief systems are vastly at odds with his own.    Underlying the humor, his images speak about the plight of Native Americans who have become strangers in their own land. The tension between Jackson's paradoxical role of outcast and conqueror contributes to the irony of the photographs. Adding to this is the fact that under Jackson's direction the photographs were taken by anonymous bystanders. 

Zig Jackson currently lives in Savannah, Georgia where he teaches photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Website: andrewsmithgallery.com
Instagram: @andrewsmithgallery