The Richness of the Soil: Considering James Luna's "Artifact Piece"

Peering over, I whispered, “He proceeded to drink a fifth of whiskey, fell on his face. A slight scar and a lump under the skin document the event”. The cold isolation was quickly interrupted by a docent in training and her curt superior. “Watch the leaning. They can’t touch. If you ever find dirt on the floor, tell the front desk and they’ll send someone.” Again, I found myself alone with the remnants of James Luna’s performance Artifact Piece, 1987. The silence and absence offered dignity.

The Nasher Museum’s exhibition “Art for a New Understanding: Native Voices, 1950s to Now” offers a chronological walk through the work of North American indigenous artists. The collection, “reshapes our understanding”. It offers a space in which the infamously one-sided, power-plagued conversations are absorbed, listened to, considered, and given time.

The exhibit itself is quite engaging – hundreds of name-brand kicks gutted and fashioned into traditional masks, hauntingly explicit comic strips, the glimmering of reflective boards performing in concert with nature against the threat of a pipeline. In this vibrant, bellowing menagerie, I was absorbed into Luna’s double performance - a performance of presence and a performance of absence. The absence offered a quiet space to contemplate the elevated plot of dirt and instructions for how to see. I found shelter in silence.

As though my vivid surroundings had quietly prepared my senses for a psychedelic experience, the edges of the wooden box rose as an embrace and I began to wonder, “Is listening loving?”

In Luna’s initial performance in 1987 he positioned his own body, wrapped in a loincloth, atop the plot of dirt surrounded by callous, sterilizing placards and diagrams. He remained still for several hours arranged in the white walls of the San Diego Museum of Man amidst the gaze of art enthusiasts and passers by.

At the Nasher, Luna’s placard reads, “Puyukitchum, Ipai, and Mexican American, 1950 – 2018”. The imprint of his weight charts out the curvature of his since-deceased form upon the earth. Images of the first performance were hung above and the unfeeling signs still pointing to Luna’s deceased form. “Having been married less than two years, emotional scars from alcoholic family backgrounds were cause for showing fears of giving, communicating and mistrust. Skin callus on ring finger remains, along with assorted painful and happy memories.” I recoiled. How can a few short past-tense sentences suffice? The callous lack of empathy offends the heart-wrenching tale of Luna’s trauma and loss. Outrageous.

Luna presents his living body as an artifact in the first performance. We are even further removed from his humanity in the second. We are confronted with the trauma of sanitizing trauma; subjecting the human experience to an almost Western clinical gaze. We dehumanize when we reorganize for the purpose of consumption. Our words, and the way we choreograph them to make sense, can strip away dignity.

Foucault is the philosopher who coined the term “clinical gaze”. It is, in short, a markedly Western way of seeing that desirously seeks out mystery, dissects it, and presents the findings in a sterile manner using field-wide jargon so that we may be able to acquire (conquer?) knowledge and use our findings as a resource to acquire (conquer?) more knowledge. This gaze avoids empathy. Feelings are subjective and therefor discounted. Is this not played out in our treatment of the indigenous?

Luna offered his body to the ravenous wrath of the gaze so that we may find a new understanding.

I began to wonder if this was precisely what a theology void of empathy does.

I began to find Christ in the first performance. The Bible illustrates the misunderstandings and misinterpretations - the pride and the fear – that crucified Christ. Here is a body offered up, subjected to signs offering a way to make sense. Christ’s signs were “Iesus Nazarenus, Rex Iudaeorum” or the cross itself and its implication of criminality. Both were on display. Luna’s piece, on the other hand, also instructed viewers on how to (improperly) interpret his wounds. Both men were stripped of their covering and left with miniscule dignity of a loincloth. Luna made an impression on the natural – the topography of the soil, which responded and was shaped by his presence. The church is Christ’s soil.

In the second performance, Luna long gone, we are almost tempted to consider the performance clever, to wonder how the dirt arrived without shifting, to ask ourselves if this iteration is as effective as the first. In this iteration, we are the present-day church and we are missing the point.

Confronted by the passing of Luna, considering the empty tomb, surrounded by the wonderland of lamentation, I mourn his loss.

The joy found in Christ is most fully realized in the resurrection of Christ and the promise of the New Creation. So, too, we find newness in Luna’s piece. It is through absence that I am brought the gift of a new understanding; the gift of an empathetic knowledge brought about through embodiment. I am taught a new compassion, given new ears to hear with, new eyes to see with, and an open heart.

The root of our theology should be enlivened by the richness of the soil, not the placards

The heart of our theology should respond to absence, and ignite a desire for empathy

In Mark 12: 30-31 Christ says, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength. The second is this: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” When we are the soil, we respond to the weight of who God is. We organize ourselves inspired by our of love for who He is and Whose we are. Then, we are able to extend ourselves to our neighbors as ourselves.

Take heed. Christ did not say “Love your neighbor by making them like yourselves”. There is a difference present between “neighbor” and “yourself” and God places love, not assimilation, as the mode of relationship. So, too, should our theology flourish forth from the soil of these greatest commandments.

Love was the silence that most soberly paid its dignity to the memory of James Luna. Love was the offering Luna’s body presented for the hope of a new understanding ignited in the hearts of the very perpetrators engaging in the subjugating gaze. I engaged in the subjecting gaze. His absence gave me newness.

The way we practice our theology should make room for silence as we love our neighbor through listening. Thanks to James Luna, this is my new understanding.