HIDE: Skin as Material & Metaphor demonstrates brilliantly the richness of American Indian artistic and critical traditions as they explore the overlaps between cultural production and political claims. In stunning images and challenging essays, the contributors to this volume cut right to the double heart of the problem: the cultural cannot escape complex multiplicity, and the politics require coherence and emotional clarity. Can one reconcile the two? Their unity in a single form, as these artists reveal, can produce transcendent and transformative art.
Organizing our thinking about such issues through the potent medium of skin, the essays and images in HIDE take us on a thoughtful journey through the politics and aesthetics of an important collection of contemporary work. Provocative, insightful, and intelligent, this fine volume defines the leading edge of American Indian art and criticism. It is not to be missed.