This year at Art Basel, we are thrilled to include “The Potlatch” by Ed and Nancy Reddin Kienholz in our booth. Created by the couple in 1988, this historical work references the Northwest Native-American custom of potlatch, a gift-giving festival headed by tribal leaders for the purpose of re-distributing wealth. Dressed in full regalia, the central figure is a chief whose head has been replaced by a deer’s head, and is offering up goods through this customary practice of giving. This poignant tableau is a statement to the demise of the Native-American people, and casts blame on our history for failing to reciprocate the act of potlatch.
“The Potlatch” first debuted at Louver New York in 1989. It went on to be included in the pivotal Kienholz retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art in 1996, which traveled to MOCA, Los Angeles, followed by the Berlinische Gallery, Berlin.
More recently, the work resurfaced last year in the exhibition “Kienholz: The Signs of the Times” at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, which then traveled to the Museum Tinguely, Basel, Switzerland earlier this year.