Demian DinéYazhi'

Demian DinéYazhi’
disrupt the settler colonial simulation, 2020, reflective vinyl wall installation, 108 x 108 in.
IN A DREAM…, 2021, vinyl banner, installed outside 323 West 39th Street, 144 x 48 in.
Courtesy the artist / non-gallery representation

Demian DinéYazhi’ is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Their graphic visual practice, often produced in collaboration with R.I.S.E. (Radical Indigenous Survivance & Empowerment), communicates a survivant future that places queer Indigenous resurgence in solidarity with cosmic and natural forces. In this new text-based installation, the artist encourages the audience to detach itself from toxic colonial spaces, digital and otherwise, in order to disrupt the logics of the settler project. The poetic text is based in part on DinéYazhi´’s active social media presence, yet here the ephemeral nature of the work demands personal experience, just as the artist encourages a connection with the “technologies of survival” that have persevered over time in sacred Indigenous bodies. New worlds emerge from the iridescent lettering, which urges the disruption of colonial simulations through community care, love, and solidarity with nature. A site-specific banner installed outside the gallery brings DinéYazhi´’s words of joyful resurgence to the streets of Lenapehoking, speculating that dreams will deliver the way to decolonization.

DESCRIPTION

An installation view of a black wall with reflective silver vinyl text that spells out a wall text installation by the artist Demian DineYazhi. The prismatic qualities of the vinyl cause it to reflect rainbow colors, making the words appear multicolored and rainbow colors to shine on the floor in front of the piece and on the wall and curtains to the left of the piece. To the left of the wall, a three foot gap leads into a darkened space at the back of the gallery, through which a hanging red blanket is partially visible and faintly illuminated. The text on the wall reads: detach yourself from the settler fascists colonizer imaginary social media and the internet exist as extensions of the settler colonial project even when we raid and subvert the fuck out of these spaces remember the technologies of survival that your ancestors passed on to your sacred body witness how they thrive to this day witness how they continually defy self-colonization witness how they persevere despite numerous, failed attempts of eradication and genocide witness how a new world emerges in the decaying flesh of colonial manipulation, illusions of supremacy, and deceptive justice witness how we survive every attempt to separate us from nature and distract us from embracing the power of community care luv and solidarity witness how we disrupt the simulation by refusing to become hopeless or powerless in our resurgence.

ARTIST BIO

Demian DinéYazhi´ (born 1983) is a Portland-based Diné transdisciplinary artist, poet, and curator born to the clans Naasht’ézhí Tábąąhá (Zuni Clan Water’s Edge) & Tódích’íí’nii (Bitter Water). Their practice is a regurgitation of purported Decolonial praxis informed by the over accumulative, exploitative, and supremacist nature of hetero cis gender communities post colonization. They are a survivor of attempted european genocide, forced assimilation, manipulation, sexual and gender violence, capitalist sabotage, and hypermarginalization in a colonized country that refuses to center its politics and philosophies around the Indigenous Peoples whose Land they occupies and refuses to rightfully give back. They live and work in a post-post-apocalyptic world unafraid to fail. @heterogeneoushomosexual

ABOUT THIS PAGE

This webpage provides both images and description to render a virtual experience of each artist’s work. Below is an image gallery that includes installation shots and details of Demian DinéYazhi'‘s installation. In-depth written descriptions that provide visual, auditory, contextual, and other sensory information are available below the image gallery.

Exhibition Photography © EFA Project Space/Yann Chashanovski