MARCUS DUNN | “OTHER YOUTH”

"Other Youth" is the first solo museum exhibition by Marcus Dunn. In these new paintings, the artist, a member of the Tuscarora Nation of North Carolina, explores his cultural heritage through the appropriation of historic images. The exhibition continues Dunn’s interrogation of the often overlooked narratives of attendees of government-backed Native American boarding schools of the late 19th and mid-20th centuries.

As one part of a long history of removing, conforming or killing indigenous people in the U.S., these boarding schools were meant to assimilate Native American children into white society through means of oppression and annihilation of their culture. Students were made to cut their hair, adopt Christian beliefs, wear standard uniforms, adopt "white" names and forbidden to speak in their own languages, among other abuses. Dunn researches these stories through found archival photographs from the Library of Congress and other sources, which he reinterprets in his signature painting style of loose, confident layers of translucent brushwork. Dunn mines histories and breathes life into his subject matter, exploring the complexity of these stories, and honoring the lives affected by these schools.

August 20 - November 3, 2020 | SCAD Museum of Art, Savannah, GA | text & curating by Ben Tollefson | photos by Aman Shakya, courtesy of SCAD