Easy Rider NDN

“Easy Rider” locates the human figure in a vast open space reminiscent of the expansive landscape of her ancestors’ traditional homelands, the Great Plains. Her carefully crafted image foregrounds the dress and personal belongings worn by fellow artist and filmmaker Iikaakskitowa (Cowboy Smithx). He is wearing an elaborately beaded cowboy hat as well as chaps and a fringed jacket, but also carries bow, arrows, and a beaded hand-held axe. In playfully teasing the viewer’s expectations, Claxton’s protagonist performs their contemporaneity, clad in attire that is at once modern and deeply rooted in applied cultural and spiritual aesthetics. Claxton’s image projects Indigenous as well as male identities in ways that defy stereotypical representation, influenced at once by Plains warrior culture, Hip Hop, lowriding and traditional applied aesthetics. "I have an interest in the theatrical and blending realms and periodization,” the artist explains, “as a way to connect the past, the now and the future and all within the spiritual belief of Mitakuye Oyasin – everything is related and a deep belief of Lakota worldview.”