Momma Has a Pony Girl… (Named History and Sets Her Free)
Artist
Dana Claxton
(Canadian, born 1959)
Date2008
MediumLight Jet C-Print
Dimensions156 × 126 cm
Credit LineThe Mendel Art Gallery Collection at Remai Modern. Gift of the artist, 2019.
Object number2019.23
Classificationsphotograph
On View
Not on viewPart of The Mustang Suite (2008), a series of five staged photographic portraits of a contemporary Indigenous family, with each member appearing with their own form of “mustang”—be it a car, bicycle or pony. Dana Claxton rebuffs sexualized stereotypes and violence in her work, especially for Indigenous women. With Momma Has a Pony Girl…(Named History and Sets Her Free) Claxton releases women from the binds of history, represented by a prancing Caucasian “Pony Girl” wearing blinders and a tail of rope, dressed like a burlesque dancer. Banished by the medicine woman in a long, red, fringed robe, “History” makes way for a different kind of future.
Mattie Gunterman
1908, printed 1976
