DECOLONIZATION: Spencer Keeton Cunningham
January 11 - March 23, 2025
reception: Saturday, January 11th I 5-8 PM
DEDICATED TO RICHARD BLUECLOUD CASTANEDA
Spencer Keeton Cunningham
American Painter, Colville Tribe
Born 1983
Verge Center for the Arts is proud to present DECOLONIZATION, a solo show of work by visionary artist Spencer Keeton Cunningham. Cunningham is an enrolled member of the Colville Tribe from the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Northeastern Washington. In his new work, Cunningham explores themes both autobiographical and societal in form from Decolonization and cultural archetypes to reservation life and alternate American Indian histories. In the past 22 years of his professional art career Cunningham continues to develop a unique visual language laced with humor, satire, and a tenacity to paint a vivid portrait of an ongoing colonization of North America. His work has earned him a place in the contemporary art world where he resides like a lone wolf.
With the scale of his current body of work, Cunningham’s paintings reach a mountainous 20ft tall, dwarfing the viewer with gargantuan works of art. Cunningham’s long-spanning career has led him to work with cult icons such as Buck 65 and his paintings are in the permanent collection of the SFMoMA, BAMPFA, the Crocker Art Museum amongst other museums. He has exhibited extensively internationally including museums in China, Los Angeles, New York, Japan, Europe, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. In addition, Cunningham has worked locally in Sacramento on various public art projects and continues to create work in the form of large scale sculpture, paintings, books, records, films and public art in the San Francisco Bay Area where he has resided for the past 20 years, and beyond.
FROM THE ARTIST:
“This will be my most personal exhibition to date. I’m hoping the viewer can enjoy these paintings and get something from them. The exhibit will be an autobiographical journey blended together with the usual themes of my work — Indigenous rights, environmental issues, themes of animal mythology, history, archetypes, war, the future decolonization of North America and the rest of the planet, as well as some new ideas I have yet to explore in an exhibition thus far.
These paintings are a snapshot into my life and the world I’ve created up to this point with my art practice. I welcome people into that world and hopefully it’s an enjoyable experience.
The goal of the show is to help decolonize the minds of the viewers who see it; art should educate and bring up important dialogues. I choose to use humor at times in art to playfully talk about serious subject matter. It’s all about just starting a dialogue.
Hopefully this show might even inspire people to become artists themselves — because it’s not about me, or my ego, or alienating the working class person from the art world. I’d rather welcome them in and make art to help other people who are struggling.”