ABOVE: Detail of Rebecca Belmore’s White Thread (2003). Belmore, a Canadian, and James Luna of California are both aboriginal artists showing work at this year’s Venice Biennale, and both spoke to the Sunday Washington Post.

The Venice Biennale this year includes works by two Aboriginal artists: James Luna, whose installation of Catholic knick-knackery and several performance pieces appears courtesy of the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and Rebecca Belmore, who has produced a video installation that is projected onto a falling curtain of water in the Canadian pavilion. Both of them chatted for the benefit of yesterday’s Washington Post with Blake Gopnik about their careers as native artists and how their heritage relates to their art. (It does, sometimes.)

The interview touches briefly on Luna and Belmore’s relationship with “traditional” aboriginal artists, who carve dancing walruses out of soapstone or paint shrieking eagles on to pottery; the traditionalists are apparently sometimes intimidated by Luna and Belmore’s aggressively conceptual and obliquely postmodern work, but also appreciate that native art is finally showing up in the pages of Artforum. Luna notes, however, that while his traditionalist acquaintances and colleagues may not be feted at the Venice Biennale, they’re selling a lot more bankable art than he is.

LINK: Washington Post > Indian Artists in Venice: Off the Traditional Path [via ArtsJournal]