Immurement
Immurement
- Creator: Jared Andreas
- Date: 2019
- Location: Boise City Hall, 1st Floor, Lobby
- Types: paintings (visual works)
- Materials: oil paint (pigmented coating), acrylic paint, canvas
- Collection: Visual Chronicle Collection
Exacerbated by popular culture’s misrepresentation of Native Americans, Jared Andreas developed a “neither this, nor that” complex as a child about his mixed heritage and enrollment in a federally recognized tribe. There are over 500 diverse tribes in the United States, each one unique. However, since the early 20th century, Native American identity has been pigeon-holed into a homogenized caricature. Trompe-l’oiel, French for ‘deceive the eye’, is a painting technique that is often used to create an illusion of three-dimensional objects onto two-dimensional surfaces. Andreas's usage of the technique and term within his paintings is not meant to necessarily trick the viewer with what they are seeing but instead to confront the stereotypes that continue to deceive our society today. It was through these paintings, made during his junior and senior year at Boise State University, that Andreas attempted to examine the constructed reality of misrepresentation and the psychological consequences. This work is a collage of various iconography and includes several styles of painting including realism, duotone, and black and white. The painting conceptually examines the subtle deceptive nature of representation to confront stereotypes. The obscured tipi conceptually connects the ideas of imprisonment and representation. The figures within the painting characterize the idea of being trapped. The artist asks viewers, “Can we ever really escape the stereotypes that are placed on us?”
