Michael Kabotie & Delbridge Honanie, Hopi Tribe
Journey of the Human Spirit, 2001
This vibrant, sweeping mural chronicles a concentrated history of the Hopi people, from their rich ancestral emergence to their tragic conquest by the Spanish to their transition into the modern age of industrialization and technology. The mural is decorated with evocative and ethnic symbols that represent both environmental harmony and destruction. Kabotie and Delbridge use bold colors and geometric shapes to unite human, animal, plant, and mechanical forms under a single canvas, conveying at once the dynamism of human agency and the living soul of organic matter on earth. Despite the mural’s beauty, the artists are unafraid to expose viewers to the dark consequences of colonialism: in the second panel, an embittered tribe member stabs a missionary in front of a Catholic Church that was built on Hopi sacred ground, recalling the events of the Pueblo Revolt in 1680; in the fifth panel, a coal-slurry pipeline contaminates the turquoise waters of an underground aquifer. These are just a few of the many intimations of irreversible environmental and cultural annihilation that are inflicted in the name of “progress” and “development” by institutions. Label by Tara Vasanth