Polly Schaafsma Human Images and Blurring Boundaries: Rock Art, Murals, and Ceremonial Figures
This talk discusses the human subjects in Rio Grande Tradition and Navajo rock art for what they reveal about perceptions of humanity's relationships to the natural environment and supernatural realm. These portrayals are concerned with the interconnectedness of all things, deflecting meaning away from human beings as prime subjects, as seen in Western religious art. Rather, the Native American abstracted, costumed figures, along with conflated human/animal subjects, define humanities' intimate link to the cosmos, and their added attributes evoke the supernatural strengths of other living beings and cosmological entities, blurring the boundaries between them.
