Spirit, (American Eagle) Animals in Extinction series, Carlos Llerena Aguirre 2020. Woodcut, 33.5” x 78”
I finished cutting the first woodcut at the Venice Printmaking Studio for Large Format. I made a live performance, in an act of protest, I carved out of the image the portraits of Sitting Bull, Geronimo, Metacomet (King Philip), and Pocahontas[1]. Leaders that inspired the founding of the first American Indian Movement in 1968. I carved the chiefs out of the woodblock, out of the background sky. In the performance in Venice, I annihilated them. I erased them from history, the same way the US army soldiers did then.
At first sight, the woodcut print appears to be a stoic rendering of the American Bald Eagle[2], an animal in extinction. But in reading the image[3], at first, we do see a picture of an American Bald eagle. But in the second reading, the eagle has large, almost human eyes, and the sky has iconography in the clouds. On the third level, the sky has four hidden portraits. The third level of reading the image does require a study of iconology, symbolism, and cultural and social-political historical events that took place at the time the work was created.
The Spirit American Eagle woodcut is a political-activist living protest against the genocide of all native American nations. It is also a protest against the stealing of the actual Eagle icon[4]. For native Americans, the eagle is the “Spirit” connecting men and the great father in the sky. The English colonizers stole the “icon” image for their new empire to represent their conquest and their power. In the same way, Adolph Hitler stole the icon of the spread wings eagle from the Roman empire[5]; The Reichsadler, as a symbol of his new empire.
[1] Geronimo, John S.C. Abbott, Black Hawk, Charles M. Scanlan, Charles Alexander Eastman, True Life Stories: The Greatest Native American Memoirs & Biographies: Geronimo, Charles Eastman, Black Hawk, King Philip, Sitting Bull & Crazy Horse. Madison & Adams Press. 2018.
[2] John James Audubon. The Birds of America Hardcover. Prestel. 2012
[4] Steven Grimwood, Journal Article. Iconography and Postmodernity.
Literature and Theology. Vol. 17. No. 1. Pp. 76-79. Oxford University Press. 2003.
[5] Steven Heller Iron Fists: Branding the 20th Century Totalitarian State, Phaidon. 2011.
