Veronica Passalacqua

History

Veronica Passalacqua is curator at the C.N. Gorman Museum at University of California, Davis. As a writer, curator, and scholar of Native North American art, her research emphasis and curatorial practices are based upon collaboration with contemporary Indigenous artists.

Movies

The Shirt

Shirt Wearer

In "The Shirt" Kanien’kehaka (Mohawk) artist and director Shelley Niro parodies the archetypal tourist tee-shirt from the point of view of First Nations Peoples as an exploration into the lasting effects of European colonialism in North America. Facing the camera directly and poised against the landscape of “America”, an Aboriginal woman with biker-like accessories bears a sequential series of statements on her tee-shirt that together comprise a discourse on colonialism. The darkly ironic and yet brutally truthful messages of "The Shirt" draw attention to the history of invasion that indigenous peoples have experienced in North America.