Sculpture

Around the 10th anniversary of 9/11, Peter B. Jones was working on a series of busts that commented on Native American identification. During this time, he repeatedly heard the word “chatter” on radio and TV news broadcasts. Jones’ perceived the sudden uptick in the use of the word to insinuate suspicious behavior, and he began reworking a Native American bust he had already started to represent this newly distrustful world. The face of the bust is riddled with bullet holes, emulating the executions committed by terrorist leaders on live television. The sinew ties on the back of the bust are decorated with carved buffalo horn beads in the shape of bombs. A nuclear cooling tower sits on top of a globe with drones and planes surrounding its circumference. The Fukishima Daiichi power plant disaster had occurred in Japan in the spring of 2011, and symbolized for the artist a calamity in the making. Binary code encircles the top spout, as a representation of increased computer surveillance. Both the world and a nuclear chimney weigh heavily on the Native figure’s head. The artist’s anger motivated him to make the bust as aesthetically unattractive as possible. Jones describes it as “a portrait of a world gone awry, a world of suspicion and blame. It is a contemplation on the state of humanity.”

All the imagery on the bust represents events that have taken place since 9/11. Triggered by the new United States surveillance measures, the artist also used his work to explain how contemporary issues, such as the passing of the Patriot Act, impact local tribe members. Jones said, “That is the point I am trying to make. We are you, we experience the same things, but we have a different perspective of history.” Post 9-11 works as both the artist’s personal perception of an increasingly anxious atmosphere and as an Iroquoian worldview within the context of a global catastrophe.