The Trickster Shift: Humour and Irony in Contemporary Native Art

by Allan J. Ryan

Over the last 15 years, a select group of professionally trained and politically astute Canadian artists of Native ancestry has produced a compelling body of work that owes much of its power to a wry and ironic sense of humour rooted firmly in the oral tradition. More than a critical/political strategy, such humour reflects a widespread cultural and communal sensibility embodied in the mythical Native American Trickster. This book explores the influence of this comic spirit on the practice of various artists through the presentation of a 'Trickster discourse,' that is, a body of overlapping and interrelated verbal and visual narratives by tricksters and about trickster practice.

Hardcover

First published June 1, 1999