Erica Lord

Erica Lord is an American artist who identifies herself as a mixed-race "cultural limbo."

Born to a Finnish-American mother and Iñupiaq/Athabascan father, Erica Lord grew up traveling between her father's village in Nenana, Alaska and her mother's home community in Michigan. Nenana, located in Central Alaska, has a large Native population, according to the 2010 census it's populated by 378 people. Her mother lived in a mostly white town in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Lord's father was an activist in the Indian movement. Her personal experience perpetually moving between various geographic places inspires her work's interest in themes of displacement, cultural identity and cultural limbo.

She received a B.A. in liberal arts and studio arts from Carleton College in 2001 and completed her M.F.A. in sculpture and photography at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006.

Lord describes herself as having become an emigrant through her six families and defines her history as the Native diaspora. That same diaspora is what motivates her art. It’s for her to explore a new way of demonstrating true cultural identity. She hopes that her art helps her audience redefine their selves, communities, and beliefs.

Erica Lord has exhibited her work in solo exhibitions at the DeVos Museum of Art (Marquette, MI) and the Alaska Native Arts Foundation Gallery (Anchorage, AK), as well as in group exhibitions such as the Havana Biennial and the Museum of Contemporary Native American Art.

Notable exhibitions

• 2010, Dry Ice, Museum of Contemporary Native American Art, Santa Fe, NM
• 2009, BadLand, Institute of American Indian Arts Museum, Santa Fe, NM: An installation of prayer bundles made from the red cloth of the United States' Star Spangled Banner.
• 2007, Off the Map: Landscape and the Native Imagination, Smithsonian Institution National Museum of the American Indian, New York, NY

Un/Defined Self-Portrait Series (2005), C-prints of variable dimension

Untitled (Tattooed Arms) (2007), Digital Photographs

Erica Lord photographs two tattoos: one on the inner side of her left forearm titled “Enrollment number” and one on her right forearm titled “Blood Quantum”. These two tattoos criticize the Native American image created by modern society.Lord’s tattoo titled “Blood Quantum”, after the blood quantum laws, is a visual criticism on the United States government control on all Native American heritage.The tattoo “Enrollment Number” is the number given to Erica Lord, and all Native Americans, by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.Placing this number on her arm, Erica Lord draws direct comparison to Holocaust survivors and their experiences to the United States expansion and relocation of Native Americans.

The Tanning Project: I Tan To Look More Native (2006),Digital Inkjet, variable dimensions

Common Native Art typically showcases Indian land and where they come from. However, this specific image has little to do with land because the photo has a black backdrop and the shot is from her waist up, focusing solely on her body. She boldly refers to this tanning ritual as white beautification: tanning or browning of the skin. Using such words is a very straight forward way to a political call to action. The words I Tan to Look More Native are scripted onto her back with sunscreen to show the contrast effect after tanning. The inscription is to challenge Native identity through the contrast being used, which to viewers start to become unrecognizable. It challenges what an "Indian" really looks like and what people thought they looked like. She uses her own body to show her struggles through becoming an emigrant. She is photographed nude with her back facing the camera in an erotic pin-up pose. She poses this way to give a duplicitous meaning to the word pose to expose those who have unrealistic expectations of what a Native person is supposed to look like.

Artifact Piece, Revisited, (2009), performance and mixed media installation

On April 3, 2008 Erica Lord arrived at the George Gustav Heye Center, the National Museum of the American Indian, at the Smithsonian Museum in New York, for a performance/installation titled Artifact Piece, Revisited. This piece was a reenactment of American artist James Luna's Artifact Piece, that he first performed at the San Diego Museum of Man in 1987. When Lord entered the gallery, she lay down in a case, closed her eyes, and allowed museum visitors to examine her over the next few hours. Captions placed throughout the display identified parts of her, such as her painted toenails. There were two glass cases on either side of the box where Lord laid, that contained clothing and her personal possessions. One side contained Alaskan Native dress, and the other contained modern clothing. This first performance of Artifact Piece, Revisited was followed by lectures and a discussion with Lord herself. The artist returned to the museum to perform the piece again twice over the next two days. Using her body as a conversation piece, Lord critiqued the displaying of Native people in museum exhibits and the display of women's bodies.