Native Survivance and the Violent Pleasures of Resignifying the Cowboy

Native Survivance and the Violent Pleasures of Resignifying the Cowboy Beenash Jafri (bio) Cowboy, curated by Nora Burnett Abrams, Miranda Lash, and Ellen Bruss, September 29, 2023–February 18, 2024, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. The myth of the cowboy is ubiquitous, not just in the US, but—because of the transnational reach of US empire and Hollywood film—across the world. If the cowboy is an icon of American colonial-imperial violence, it has equally been a site of desire, pleasure, and resignification. One of the first pieces on view upon entry into the Denver Museum of Contemporary Art's Cowboy exhibit is Richard Prince's Untitled (Cowboy) series (1989). In the displayed piece, Prince photographs and reframes a photograph of a Marlboro cigarette advertisement from Time magazine. A backlit cowboy sits on top of a horse, holding a lasso against a bright but empty landscape. By isolating the image from the context of the advertisement, the photograph (and Prince's series more broadly) speaks to the extent to which a particular image of the cowboy has become both an icon of rugged US individualism and tough, solitary masculinity and a global reproducible figure within popular culture. Extending this theme, Cowboy takes up the figure's enduring legacy. The city of Denver is a fitting place to explore the cowboy given that it began as a mining town—part of the westward colonial expansion of the US—and given that ranching remains a significant part of the Colorado economy. Included in the exhibit are twenty-seven artists who in distinct ways reflect on the cowboy's tumultuous legacy: John Baldessari, R. Alan Brooks, Mel Chin, Gregg Deal, Angela Ellsworth, rafa esparza (with Fabian Guerrero), Juan Fuentes, Karl Haendel, Luis Jiménez, Kahlil Joseph, Grace Kennison, Deana Lawson, Matthew J. Mahoney, Laurel Nakadate, Richard Prince, Otis Kwame Kye Quaicoe, Akasha Rabut, Lucy Raven, Ken Taylor Reynaga, Jaye Rhee, Yumi Roth and Emmanuel David, Ana Segovia, Amy Sherald, Stephanie Syjuco, Kenneth Tam, Andy Warhol, and Nathan Young. Many of these artists incorporate erased historical contexts and consider how people situated at the intersections of multiple End Page 311 identifications (across race, gender, nation, and sexuality) have responded to and engaged with the cowboy, both as a historical figure and as a symbolic one. Across the exhibit, the curators Nora Burnett Abrams, Miranda Lash, and Ellen Bruss provide clear didactics—at the exhibit entrance, at each section entrance, and for individual pieces—that make these intentions abundantly clear and accessible. Beyond these didactics, additional information is available through a free app that includes short audio and text-based commentaries in which select artists discuss their inspirations and motivations. Cowboy takes up the entirety of this small museum and is divided into three sections, each on a full floor: on the main floor, "Mythmaking" prompts us to reflect on the cowboy as myth; on the second floor, "From Fantasy to Lived Experience" shifts the focus from the myth of the cowboy to the cowboy as worker and rodeo performer; and in the basement, "Reimagining the Past, Present, and Future" presents artists speculating on the futures made possible through creative engagement with the cowboy and its associated histories. By foregrounding the cowboy as a site of myth and meaning-making—for example, through the placement of "Mythmaking" on the main floor—the curators suggest that the primary problem plaguing the cowboy imaginary is its narrow scope, which makes particular representations more prominent than others. The exhibit expands or opens up these narrow/short-sighted/stereotypical perceptions by offering more authentic representations of the cowboy. Yet its design and organization—which emphasizes the cowboy as a multifaceted and multicultural figure—has the simultaneous effect of downplaying the historical and material conditions of settler colonialism and imperialism that make the cowboy so ubiquitous. The exhibit thus exemplifies the disjunct between frameworks of multiculturalism and decolonization. However, if we consider the exhibit from the vantage point of Indigenous and settler colonial studies, it becomes clear that even if a variety of actors engage with the cowboy, they do so precisely because it is embedded in the US settler colonial project. The pleasures of resignification are entangled...