I am tired of being considered a youth artist. I don’t know what ever happened to the term Emerging artist, althought after nearly ten years of creating video work I don’t believe I am really an emerging artist anymore. Who knows? Who decides? Art is an institution these days.

I am at a critical point in these new projects I am working on, this one hurdle I always seem to have where I start to wonder about my audience and if they really care to hear what I have to say. Then I remember the words of bell hooks, who says audiences are made from the art, not the other way around. Once you fall into the trap of pleasing people, your art suffers.

Maybe people do want to see boring bland art. I can’t argue with that. I don’t want to make it though.

The youth label does trouble me though. Jim Morrison died when he was 27, yet we don’t consider him a youth poet/musician. Someone told me I was considered youth because I’m native. This is also a troubling assertion because it implies a paternalistic colonialist viewpoint of native people being far more immature than a white person.

Personally, I think the whole “youth” label in art is just another way for the baby boomers to put us down and shut us out of their institutions. We’ll have to kill them. 😛