Lasso

2018

LED firebox with transmounted chromogenic transparency

Painted buffalo skull by Kim Soo Goodtrack.

Dimensions: 72 x 120 inches

Lasso shows Blackfoot filmmaker Cowboy Smithx, casting out a fantastically long and looping lasso. In a striking fringed jacket, velour tracksuit, and embellished parfleche basket, his clothing melds hip hop fashion, stereotypical signifiers of “Cowboys and Indians,” and Indigenous beadwork. Claxton wanted to “collapse images that might consider what an Indigenous male is, in the past, in the imaginary, in the present and in the future.” Claxton furthers this by including a Mustang style bicycle beside Cowboy Smithx. The bike is emblematic of 1950s Americana culture and, through its title, recalls the breed of wild horses brought by Spanish colonizers to the American West.

— from The Trustee’s website

In Lasso, she wanted to “collapse images that might consider what an Indigenous male is, in the past, in the imaginary, in the present and in the future.” The image layers Lakota aesthetics, hip hop culture and the Wild West: a low-rider bike, adorned with a painted buffalo skull and embellished parfleche basket, stands next to Smithx, who wears a velour tracksuit, traditional beadwork and “that lovely hat.” Claxton instructed him to “lasso the universe.” Infinity is a recurring theme in her work, she says. “I think it has something to do with the enormous sky I grew up under in Saskatchewan, which went on and on, as far as you could ever see.”

— Michelle Cyca, for McLean’s