Cara Romero (b. 1977 Inglewood, California), Last Indian Market, 2015, Archival pigment photograph, 32 1/4 in. x 110 in. (81.9 cm x 279.4 cm), Museum purchase, Erna Bottigheimer Sands (Class of 1929) Art Acquisition Fund 2019.1121

The Davis Museum recently purchased the monumental photograph Last Indian Market by Cara Romero, a citizen of the Chemehuevi Indian Tribe. This work encapsulates Romero’s mission to use photography to “create a critical visibility for modern Natives, to get away from that one-narrative story, and to dig into our multiple identities.” A playful and performative upending of Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Romero reframes the iconic scene with Native artists and intellectuals from the Santa Fe area. She presents an alternative history of Native identity that reckons with Eurocentric visual representations that either removes Native peoples or presents them as an exotic other, such as the nineteenth-century photography of Edward Curtis or contemporary racist sports mascots. Last Indian Market will be on view in the Davis galleries through December 13, 2020.

From left to right, the individuals depicted are:
Chris Eyre (Cheyenne & Arapahoe), Film Director of Smoke Signals
Amber-Dawn Bear Robe (Siksiksa Nation), Art Historian
Kenneth Johnson (Seminole), Jeweler
Diego Romero (Cochiti), Potter
Darren Vigil Gray (Apache), Painter
Kathleen Wall (Jemez), Sculptor
Marcus Amerman (Buffalo Man)-(Hopi/Choctaw), Multi-Media Artist & Performer
Pilar Agoyo (Cochiti), Fashion Designer
Marian Denipah (Okay Owingeh), Jeweler
Steve LaRance (Hopi/Kakota), Jeweler
Cannupa Hanska-Luger (Mandan-Hidatsa-Arikara/Lakota), Sculptor
Linda Lomahaftewa (Hopi/Choctaw), Printmaker
America Meredith (Cherokee), Painter