Brian Jungen

by Clint Burnham, Jessica Morgan

Brian Jungen is perhaps best known for his Prototypes for New Understanding (1998-2005), a series of reproduction Northwest Coast Aboriginal masks made from disassembled athletic shoes. That ingenious mash-up of two seemingly disparate hot commodities--globally branded footwear and revered First Nations artwork--reflects the artist's own hybrid cultural identity, as both a member of the Doig River band, a tribe in British Columbia's Dunne-za Nation, and a fixture of Vancouver's thriving art scene, a position recently cemented by a show at the Tate Modern in London. Other meldings of consumer goods and common materials through which Jungen has explored the exchange of goods, ideas and cultures include a basketball court made of sewing tables and a whale skeleton built from plastic lawn chairs. All represent the Postmodern, postcolonial world with aplomb and a sense of humor. Includes an interview with the important postcolonial theorist Homi Bhaba.

128 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2007

About the author

Clint Burnham is Professor of English at Simon Fraser University, Canada, where he also teaches theory and popular culture. His books include The Jamesonian Unconscious: The Aesthetics of Marxist Theory (1995), The Only Poetry that Matters: Reading the Kootenay School of Writing (2011), and the collections Digital Natives (2011, co-ed. with Lorna Brown) and From Text to Txting: New Media in the Classroom (2012, co-ed. with Paul Budra).