Graduation Year
2012
Document Type
Thesis
Degree
M.A.
Degree Granting Department
Art
Major Professor
Riccardo Marchi, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Elisabeth Fraser, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Sara Crawley, Ph.D.
Keywords
Contemporary art, Canada, photography, feminist, Native American
Abstract
My master's thesis explores the photographic series "This Land is Mime Land," which Shelley Niro made in 1992. Despite this work's complex form and structure, there are currently no sustained studies of this series alone, or books solely dedicated to Niro's art. Instead, "Mime Land" is often discussed in compilations that address a number of Native artists, Western feminist practices, or multiple works in Niro's oeuvre. My thesis fills this gap, as I closely investigate how "Mime Land" asks the viewer to look at visual culture, histories and Niro herself. Bell hooks's definition of the "oppositional gaze" - meaning a way of looking that challenges the conventions of visual culture by implementing the media's tools (film and photography) to construct new images of self - provides the framework for my analysis. Specifically, I contend that the subject, form and structure of "Mime Land" critically intervene in mainstream visual culture by asking the viewer to look at Native American women's identities, cultures and histories in new ways; ways that disavow the conventions of dominant visual representations and return the power over one's image to Niro, her family and community. My study demonstrates this thesis through a close consideration of the context contemporary to the work's production; a detailed examination of the photographs in the series; and an analysis of the work's overall structure.
Scholar Commons Citation
Mccall, Jennifer Danielle, "Renegotiating Identities, Cultures and Histories: Oppositional Looking in Shelley Niro's "This Land is Mime Land"" (2012). USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations.
https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/4149
