Justin Guthrie
Feeding Mother, from New World Rites, 2021
Digital photograph
22 3/4 x 15 3/4 in
57.8 x 40 cm
57.8 x 40 cm
Copyright the artist
Third party description from DH: Justin Guthrie is breathtakingly contemporary in the intensity, variation and humor present in his practice. “Feeding Mother” is a framed archival pigment print from the...
Third party description from DH:
Justin Guthrie is breathtakingly contemporary in the intensity, variation and humor present in his practice. “Feeding Mother” is a framed archival pigment print from the series “New World Rites,” a since sold-out photobook released in 2021, that examines the modern plight of assimilation and urbanization among Indigenous people. Through sculptural, constructed images Guthrie questions the ways that contemporary Natives can connect with tradition and ideology despite the often historical violence enacted on their communities.
In Feeding Mother, the hands of a close family member crack an egg into a waiting, light-filled opening in the earth. This image suggests new ritual methods of connecting with the earth physically through another one of Justin Guthrie’s areas of interests, the archetypal symbol. The egg has always signaled fertility, womanhood, and domestic warmth and has also been isolated to the realm of the kitchen thanks to the intervention of industrial agriculture. What does it mean to flip this on its head? Guthrie would love for us to find out.
Justin Guthrie is breathtakingly contemporary in the intensity, variation and humor present in his practice. “Feeding Mother” is a framed archival pigment print from the series “New World Rites,” a since sold-out photobook released in 2021, that examines the modern plight of assimilation and urbanization among Indigenous people. Through sculptural, constructed images Guthrie questions the ways that contemporary Natives can connect with tradition and ideology despite the often historical violence enacted on their communities.
In Feeding Mother, the hands of a close family member crack an egg into a waiting, light-filled opening in the earth. This image suggests new ritual methods of connecting with the earth physically through another one of Justin Guthrie’s areas of interests, the archetypal symbol. The egg has always signaled fertility, womanhood, and domestic warmth and has also been isolated to the realm of the kitchen thanks to the intervention of industrial agriculture. What does it mean to flip this on its head? Guthrie would love for us to find out.