Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith (Citizen of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation)
(1940-2025)
Date:
2000
Medium:
Oil on canvas

In Echo Map I, state names are replaced with the words for “hello” in Spanish and French or obscured by newspaper clippings and paint drips over borders, symbolizing the erasure of Native presence and historical land claims. The map becomes a representation of erasure and invisibility, with Native lives and connections to the land overwritten by European dominance.

Jaune Quick-to-See-Smith began her series of U.S. map paintings in 1992 to mark the 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ landing in the Bahamas and to respond to the United States’ quincentennial celebrations. As a member of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes of the Flathead Nation, Smith sought to address the legacy of violence and dispossession faced by Native people following European colonization.

Purchase with exchange funds from the Pearlstone Family Fund and partial gift of The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. BMA 2020.54