Rattle

Dana Claxton is known for her exploration of Lakota perspective in relation to contemporary life. For this work, she learned to make her own rattles in order to explore their function in indigenous healing technology and to invoke the spiritual realm. The movement, music, and prayers that structure the video installation convey the dynamic nature of Plains Indian art, found in the rhythmic sounds and steps of traditional ceremony and in the synthesizers and Peyote songs heard here. The interplay of four projected panels refers to the four directions, four seasons, and other classifications of the natural world in Plains cosmology. The echoing of images reflects the continuum of earth and sky. In Lakota belief, Claxton explains, “the above world and the below world mirror each other.”