About three hours north of Las Vegas, Nevada, is the largest piece of contemporary art on the planet.
Fifty years in the making, land artist Michael Heizer’s ‘City’ is a “vast complex of shaped mounds and depressions made of compacted dirt, rock, and concrete,” according to the work’s website.
Built on Paiute land, which was seized from the tribe in 1874, ‘City’ benefits from land obtained without treaty and without a single payment ever being made by the federal government or residents to its Indigenous caretakers.
The nonprofit organization tasked with overseeing the artwork issued a statement acknowledging the ancestral territories it was built on, but doesn’t further delve into the connections between the art, the land, and the people it was stolen from.
Rather, Heizer says that the land is in his blood, pointing to his grandfather’s arrival in Nevada in the 1880’s to operate a tungsten mine as proof to his claim. Never mind that the state’s seizure from tribes in the nineteenth century made it possible for his grandfather to safely carve a living from the land.
And now, only two generations later, Heizer, whose work is inspired by Native American traditions of mound building and the pre-Colombian ritual cities of Central and South America, has built ‘City’ smack in the middle of stolen Indian territory.
Photos: Triple Aught Foundation Michael Heizer
The art world sees a megasculpture masterpiece; others see a tribute to American colonialism.
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By Tristan Ahtone
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