City Hall

Inscriptions

Signed and inscribed, in black ink, on reverse, bottom edge, left to right: 96-97 "Entering Zigs Indian Reservation City Hall Z" San Francisco .Co. "Entering Zig's Indian Reservation Series. Zig Jackson Mandan Hidatsa

Label

Zig Jackson’s outrageous placement of his headdressed chief in his own personal reservation reinvents a once-colonized land where Natives faced oblivion and salvages Indian history.

"Why do I have to go and photograph Indians on a reservation? Why can’t I be my own Indian on my own reservation? So I came up with the idea of Zig’s Reservation. I would occupy different areas, for example, Golden Gate Park. They were going to build a ballpark in China Basin, which was an area with a lot of homeless people, and they were going to make them move. So I took my sign and put it up there . . . and the cops gave me fifteen minutes to move, so I went to City Hall and I occupied the grounds of City Hall with my sign." —Zig Jackson

From the 2019 exhibition Portrait of the Artist as an Indian / Portrait of the Indian as an Artist, guest curated by Rayna Green

Course History

SART 30, SART 75, Photography II and III, Virginia Beahan, Spring 2019

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2020

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2020

NAS 30.21, Native American Art and Material, Jami Powell, Spring 2021

Geography 25.01, Sociology 49.22, Women’s Gender, and Sexuality Studies 37.03, Social Justice and the City, Erin Collins, Fall 2023

Art History 48.02, Histories of Photography, Katie Hornstein, Spring 2024

Exhibition History

Portrait of the Artist as an Indian / Portrait of the Indian as an Artist, Harteveldt Family Gallery, Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, April 24-July 15, 2019.

Provenance

The artist, Savannah, Georgia; sold to present collection, 2019.

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Subjects