Many artists appropriate, obscure, and reconfigure powerful cultural symbols to which attachment is commonly expected. The late performance studies scholar José Esteban Muñoz developed the concept “disidentification” to describe working through such dominant images that pose possible threats, moving instead toward strategies of survival and techniques to imagine other possible worlds.
Fritz Scholder
Buffalo Dancer: New Mexico, ca. 1975 Lithograph
30 x 22 inches
Image courtesy of Krannert Art Museum