Wild West Show

Charcoal & chalk on paper, 60” x 48”, Private Collection

Buffalo Bill is a character I use in a series of works where I explore the idea of who gets to shape the framework around people’s cultures, specifically marginalized ones. Buffalo Bill had a touring live show in 19th-century America in which he inaccurately educated the masses about Native American cultures. He also depicted himself as a heroic White man that survived the ‘savage’ natives—perpetuating a ‘manifest destiny’ that brought so much destruction to the land and Native Americans.

Curator’s Note: Manifest destiny was a widely held cultural belief in 19th-century U.S. that American settlers were divinely destined to expand across North America, thereby justifying the taking of Native American land.