Jimmie Durham

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Artist, performer, poet, essayist, and activist Jimmie Durham (b. 1940, Washington, Arkansas) is one of the most influential voices of the contemporary art world, reflecting on the complex and problematic encounters between the human being, technology, and nature from different cultural perspectives. His oeuvre spans sculpture, drawing, collage, printmaking, painting, photography, video, performance, and poetry, demonstrating remarkable attention to form and the specificity of material choices. Durham became internationally famous in the 1980s for his sculptures made from materials such as wood, stone, and the bones and skulls of animals, with which he frequently embodies the incorporation of Native American elements into contemporary art, thus breaking down standardized visual languages and discourses. 0This monographic publication accompanies his exhibition God?s Children, God?s Poem at the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, and has been conceived in close collaboration with the artist. Featuring an extensive text by Jimmie Durham, and with contributions by the curator and art historian of the Cree Indians Heritage Richard William W. Hill, and the Migros Museum Director Heike Munder, the book contextualizes the exhibition within the larger body of Durham?s artistic practice, which is a continuous examination of social and political topics. The issue of the representation of civilizing values, historicity, and social identity are also of central importance in his works.0