from︙Nicholas B. Jacobsen
Content Warning: This exhibition addresses white supremacy and contains racist imagery. These images are included so that the ongoing histories they reference may be reckoned with. Some folks may need no reminder of these violences and ideologies.
“May we go forward in repentance which does not require individual culpability and shows how a community own and understands the reverberations of its actions and its realities. May we seek repentance, which means to walk in a different direction. It's so much more than, "I'm sorry."
— Paraphrased from Reverend Serene Jones on On Being
Installation view of: The Family (land of my breath, people of my flesh) - print of “The Family: A Proclamation to the World;” photos of my ancestors; dirt, sand, compost, clay, and gypsum from Nuwu land (Washington County, Utah), Tiwa land (Albuquerque, NM), and Mescalaro Apache land (White Sands National Park); photos of "Hudson" ship, covered wagons, and Granite Mountain Records Vault; frames. 2020.
I am a seventh-generation Utah-Mormon, a child of British, Danish, Welsh, Swedish, and U.S. American migrants. After being pushed out of their homes in New York, Ohio, Missouri, and Illinois my people migrated across the Great Plains into the Great Basin. There they pushed the Newe (Goshutes), Shoshone Bannock, Eastern Shoshone, Nuuchi-u (Utes), Nuwu (Southern Paiutes), and Diné (Navajo) out of their ancestral homelands, where their food lives, where their waters run, where their creation stories emerged, where their families have been for millennia. They called this massacre site and their new home, Utah. This is where I am from. I am in love with the land I was raised with/in. This is not the land that my body evolved with. This is not the place from which my language emerged. I am in love with someone else's homeland.
Holy Family, broken - found Nativity scene decoration that I accidentally broke. 2019.
Detail of: The Family (land of my breath, people of my flesh)
Commemorative Plates (set 2) (image credit: Daniel Hojnacki)
Installation view of: Commemorative Plates (set 1) (image credit: Daniel Hojnacki)
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, or Mormonism, was established between 1820-1844 by the White settler-colonist, Joseph Smith. In the spring of 1820 on Seneca land (western New York), Joseph saw/claimed to see a vision in which God and Jesus appeared to him embodied. Mormonism is a uniquely American religion, not only because it was created on this land, but because their central sacred text, The Book of Mormon, claims to be a "record of God's dealings with ancient inhabitants of the Americas."
One Nation Under God - found porcelain or china plate, digital collage, ceramic decal. 2020.
Adam Ondi Omni - found porcelain or china plate, digital collage, ceramic decal. 2020.
Installation view of: [1] “upon a rock” - sandstone from Nuwu territory (St. George, Utah), Book of Mormon pages, wheat paste. 2019. [2] “40 days and 40 nights” (day 38 - 3/7/20) - Books of Mormon, water from Tiwa territory (Albuquerque, NM/Rio Grande), time, mold. 2020. [3] “pass away so as by fire” - Book of Mormon (burned). 2019. [4] “dust of the earth” - Book of Mormon, clay from Nuwu territory (St. George, UT/Santa Clara river), sand from many places. 2019.
Mormonism teaches that the Americas were "set apart" from an up-to-that-point supercontinent during the Flood of Noah in which God cleansed this land; purifying it through erasure, removal, and genocide. Then, around 600 A.D. ancient Israeli emigrants, who The Book of Mormon describes as a "white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, flee to the Americans with God as their guide. This group of migrants split into two socio-political groups. One of these groups, the Lamanites, rebel against God and so God curses them with "a skin of blackness [so] that they might not be enticing unto my people." This cursed people are said to be the ancestors of contemporary Indigenous people of this land.
“upon a rock” - sandstone from Nuwu territory (St. George, Utah), Book of Mormon pages, wheat paste. 2019.
Installation view of: Commemorative Plates (set 3) (image credit: Daniel Hojnacki)
The Book of Mormon goes on to promise that if/when Indigenous peoples of this land accept The Book of Mormon as their own "they shall be a pure and delightsome people." In editions of this book released between 1840 and 1981, that same text read, "they shall be a white and a delightsome people." In a video from Book of Mormon Central this change is addressed as "a small change because in Joseph Smith's day the dictionary definition of 'white' and 'pure' were nearly identical," ignoring the white-supremacy of "Joseph Smith's day" that shaped the definition of those words.
Noah and Jesus (Genocide) - found porcelain or china plate, digital collage, ceramic decal. 2020.
Discoverer Pos(s)e - found porcelain or china plate, digital collage, ceramic decal. 2020.
Installation view of: "The veil was taken from our minds, and the eyes of our understanding were opened," I' M P U R E (deeds), “Reflection on dirt involves reflection on the relation of order to disorder, being to non-being, form to formlessness, life to death," real White?, and Commemorative Plates (set 4 of 4) (image credit: Daniel Hojnacki)
Detail of: I’ M P U R E (deeds) - performance. table, white table cloth, white lace, doily, white coveralls, white shoes, white socks, white underwear, face mask, hairnet, pearl necklace, Mr. Clean Bliss gloves, Behr ultra pure white paint, Book of Mormon, mr. clean MagicEraser, Pure food grade gypsum, C&H pure cane sugar, Comet with bleach, Hanes 100% cotton panties, Wonder bread (classic white), Clorox Clean-Up, Nestle Pure Life purified water, ceramic mug, Great Value bleach, Clorox disinfecting wipes, Signature Care Xtreme whitening wraps, Tippy Toes baby powder (pure cornstarch), Shur Fine bleached flour, Arm & Hammer pure baking soda, table salt (100% natural), photo the LDS temple and site of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, frames. 2020. (image credit: Daniel Hojnacki)
Detail of: I' M P U R E (deeds)
Detail of: I' M P U R E (deeds) (image credit: Daniel Hojnacki)
Installation view of: I’ M P U R E (deeds) - video projection, all white U.S. flag. 6:44. 2019.
real White - concrete; basalt; sandstone; cinder block; wood; gypsum; fake white poppies; white stripe of a 100% cotton U.S. flag; Wonder bread (classic white); pure driven snow; decorative cotton blossoms; 100% silk thread; pure white sugar; 100% natural table salt; Comet with bleach; bleached flour; whole milk; Clorox disinfecting wipes (kills 99.99%); pure clay (porcelain); baby powder (pure cornstarch); white wine; 100% white cotton panties; photos of the sculptures Normman and Norma; alabaster busts of Apollo Belvedere and Venus de Milo; apple with bite; fake rib bone; white Rock Dove (pigeon) feathers; doily; handkerchiefs; photo of the Prophet, 1st and 2nd counselors, and 12 apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in their temple in Rome, Italy; stars cut from a U.S. flag; small U.S. flag dipped in ultra pure white paint. 2020. (image credit: Daniel Hojnacki)
Detail of: real White? (image credit: Daniel Hojnacki)
Installation view of: Commemorative Plates (set 4)
monochrome monoculture - white paint samples, turf, decorative picket fence, white stripe from a U.S. flag, wood, glue. 2020.
and of my breath, people of my flesh is a partial record
of my people and the lands I was raised with/in.
My family has been Mormon and Utahn for as long
as either of those two things have existed.
All of my direct ancestors were in Utah by 1884
and they never left.
I was raised on Nuwu (Southern Pauite) lands
in a place my people call Saint George, Utah.
But this is not the land my flesh evolved with.
This is not the place from which my language emerged.
I am in love with with this land, the land that raised me.
I am in love with someone else's homeland.
About Nicholas B. Jacobsen
Nicholas B. Jacobsen is a research-based artist concentrating on assumptions about the natural world and our relationships with and place within it. They are a seventh- generation Utah-Mormon, a Euro-American raised in the traditional homelands of the Nuwu (Southern Paiutes), near the Pine Valley Mountains and Virgin River in Southwestern Utah. Jacobsen’s work explores their personal and ancestral connections to settler-colonialism, hetero-patriarchy, human-exceptionalism, Whiteness, and Mormonism via performance, video, installation, digital collage, and found-object sculpture. Through vulnerability and deeply personal narratives they hope to unsettle many of the foundational myths of their upbringing and bring awareness to histories that are often ignored in our dominant culture.
They are currently completing a Master of Fine Arts degree in Art & Ecology at the University of New Mexico (UNM). Jacobsen has received multiple awards including: scholarships and fellowships at UNM, Omaha Arts and Entertainment's "Best Emerging Artist" and "Best New Media Artist," has been recognized as one of Omaha's "Five Artists to Watch," and worked as an assistant to Jun Kaneko. Their works have been exhibited and collected throughout the U.S.
Website: www.nicholasbjacobsen.com
Instagram: @nicholasbjacobsen
Related
Episode 2︙Family, Mormonism, and Whiteness
Nicholas sat down with me to speak about his exhibition, from, which seeks to unsettle the Mormon assumptions of masculinity, white supremacy, and capitalism (i.e. the foundations of U.S. culture).
JUL 19, 2020