Cahuilla Artist Gerald Clarke Featured in Desert X 2023

Artist Gerald Clarke Jr. (Cahuilla) wearing the "Amnesia" shirt and standing with his work "Immersion"

By Emily Clarke

Enrolled Cahuilla tribal member, Gerald Clarke Jr., is an artist, educator, former tribal leader, cattle rancher, and traditional Bird Singer. He is most known for his aluminum can basket sculptures and branded prints that use multimedia forms to express and question important social issues within the Native American community. This weekend, Desert X 2023 (Coachella Valley) officially opened and a new interactive sculpture created by Clarke was included. There was a special sneak-peak on Friday, where important guests were able to visit Gerald’s work as well as enjoy traditional Bird Singing and Bird Dancing led by the Painiktem Bird Singers from the Agua Caliente Band of Cahuilla Indians. Desert X is a site-specific art exhibition in which each invited artist creates work throughout the desert that the public then travels to see throughout the months of March and April. Clarke is only the second California Native artist to be included, and the first ever Cahuilla artist, despite the fact that many Desert X exhibitions are on what was traditionally known as Cahuilla land. Chemehuevi photographer Cara Romero was the first California Native artist to be invited to participate, and had a series of billboards along Interstate 10 through Coachella Valley that celebrate the ancestral lands of of the Cahuilla, Chemehuevi, Serrano, and Mojave people through the depiction of Chemehuevi “time-travelers.” Another Native artist, Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit and Unangax̂), was included in the 2021 Desert X exhibition with his piece entitled “Never Forget,” which caused much controversy within both the Native and non-Native community.

Gerald Clarke’s work, entitled “Immersion,” is an interactive sculpture piece that combines the Cahuilla basketry tradition with the American board game franchise. “Immersion” is an approximately 100-foot sized basket piece made out of plywood and straw waddles that lays flat against the desert landscape. When you arrive at the site, you are met with a series of signs helping guide you to “Immersion,” one of which is a scannable QR code with which you can download the “game cards.” The basket includes four pathways to the center that are meant to be walked on, each entitled after the four cardinal directions sacred to Cahuilla people. Each game card has four questions and answers, and which one you answer is determined by which pathway you begin the game on. “Immersion” is a sort-of Indigenous Trivial Pursuit; each question relates to Indigenous people, Native history, and Cahuilla culture. Question topics range from Indigenous Chamorro history to the meaning of the word “Cahuilla.” As you play the game, each correctly answered question earns you a step towards the center of the basket, where the game ends and you receive your “prize.” The round center of the basket includes four more QR codes, each with a recording the participant is invited to listen to and reflect on. The four recordings include a retelling of the Cahuilla Creation story told entirely in the traditional Cahuilla language with no English translation, a recording of a traditional Bird Song, and more.

Clarke says he made his first interactive board game work (on a much smaller scale) about twenty years ago, and has made a few different basketry sculptures, however this is the first time he has combined the two ideas. As a Native Studies professor, Clarke understands just how little non-Native people actually know about Indigenous people and history despite the Native culture that lives and thrives around them. By testing the participants’ knowledge through “Immersion,” Clarke draws attention to that lack of knowledge and encourages us to consider the “why” and “how” of Native erasure. In an article from the NY Times, Clarke suggests that most people won’t be able to make it to the middle without cheating, which he calls an “American tradition.” Clarke also acknowledges the importance of the location of the work being where Cahuilla people can easily travel to experience it. Clarke’s work is arguably well-known throughout the world, however, he strives to create work close to home that is accessible to his people.

Meet Paul Steward!

In addition to the opening of “Immersion,” Clarke collaborated with Desert X and WindMill City Screen Printing to design a T-shirt inspired by one of his popular branded prints. The shirt, which you can purchase here, mimics the burnt paper look of Clarke’s prints and includes a “burnt” image of the United States along with the word “Amnesia.” The original “Amnesia” print draws attention to the United State’s erasure of Native people and history, as well as responds to the “Immigrant debate” that heightened in 2016. Clarke reminds people that if you aren’t Native, you come from immigrants, therefore the recent racism towards people of color migrating to this country is dumbfounding. As much of Clarke’s work does, the shirt expresses important and controversial issues while seemingly tricking spectators into getting “roped into” learning about Indigenous culture through the guise of a striking piece of art.