Empowering Art review – Indigenous masterworks full of wonder and sorrow

Sainsbury Centre, Norwich
Orca whale totem poles and otter masks feature in this eye-opening exhibition of a culture in which ‘every man was his own Leonardo’

When the artist Simeon Stilthda saw a picture of Egypt’s Great Sphinx in a missionary bible in the 1870s, he carved his own version of it. Stilthda was a member of the Haida people in the Pacific Northwest of the Americas and his carving was a tribute from the indigenous culture of this region to ancient Egypt, thousands of miles and years away. It’s not just a wonderful sculpture – round the back, the Sphinx has a Haida hairstyle – but a piece of art theory in wood. Stilthda draws eye-opening parallels between his community’s religious art and that of the Pharaohs.

Like the ancient Egyptians who conjoined a human and lion to create the Sphinx, the Indigenous peoples of North America’s Pacific Northwest have a magical eye for nature. This compelling exhibition transports you to vast coniferous forests and the open ocean where humans and animals are close. This style of Pacific Northwest art, with its blocky curved patterns, appears to emulate the black and white markings of one of the region’s ruling creatures, the killer whale. Not only do orcas feature on totem poles along with birds mythic and real, but their “abstract” appearance is reflected in a style that brilliantly stretches and warps reality.

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