2025 SPE Annual Conference: Adaptations
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print this pageA Vernacular Response
Imagemaker: Rapheal Begay
Sunday, September 15 - 10:00AM to 10:45AM
ELIF 301
A Vernacular Response is an ongoing attempt to not only document the Navajo Nation but to also present and represent culture, community, and creation in various forms such as photography, installation, and platforms of space and time. Through the documentation of environment, a moment is created that both celebrates and challenges its source of creation. Preexisting aesthetic relationships found within/of the reservation offer an exploration and expression of identity, place, and time. In the end, fact-fiction, reality-fantasy, traditional-contemporary, and Native-non-Native aspects of being reflect an environment known as home.
With the sky above and the earth below, I find myself connected to the land and to my surroundings. As such, I believe the recollection of self through memory and one's relationship to memory is an ongoing aspect of, not only art, but life. It is through photography that I am able to inform and inspire my own path filled with culture, creativity, and community. At the end of the day, I strive to acknowledge and embrace each moment that can only exist within that moment; A Vernacular Response.
An ongoing theme within the series and journey is the acknowledgement and celebration of Indigenous innovation and imagination. As a means of survival and adaptability, one can discern the role of creativity within Navajo art and life. For example, the Navajo cultural teaching of hozho expresses the intellectual concept of order, the emotional state of happiness, the biological condition of health and well-being, and the aesthetic dimensions of balance, harmony, and beauty. Therefore, concept and content become synonymous with one another as both elements become interchangeable within the frame of the image.
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Rapheal Begay
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