Object Record
Images
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Metadata
Object ID Number |
CSP 12-301(5) |
Artist |
Clairmont, Corwin |
Title |
Banana Polar Bear |
Date |
2012 |
Medium |
Monoprint |
Dimensions (H x W x D) |
22.375" x 30" |
Credit Line |
Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts Archive |
Culture |
North America / United States / Salish-Kootenai |
Collection |
Crow's Shadow Institute of the Arts |
Object Name |
|
Description |
Polar bear overlaid by a yellow banana, on top of a large blue and light blue cross, all on a white background. |
Exhibit Label Copy |
Corwin "Corky" Clairmont received his BFA from Montana State University and MFA from California State University, Los Angeles, and taught first in the printmaking program at the Otis School in southern California before returning to Montana in 1984 to establish the arts department at the Salish Kootenai College, a tribal college on his home reservation. Clairmont considers himself not only a printmaker but an installation and action artist and views exhibitions as weapons for change. His work challenges the cultural and ecological effects of European settlement upon the land inhabited by Indigenous peoples for thousands of years. At Crow's Shadow, Clairmont drew inspiration from his November 2011 trip to Churchill, Manitoba, on the shores of Hudson Bay in Canada, where he and others observed more than fifty polar bears, many in close proximity to human settlements. The unusually large mainland population was a result of the late-forming polar ice, an impact of global warming. Banana Polar Bear is made from a photograph Clairmont took while in Canada, juxtaposed with the image of a banana peel, symbolizing not only the warming conditions but the global economic system that has contributed to climate change. |