If you were to tell a young Frank Buffalo Hyde that he’d one day become a successful artist, it wouldn’t be that surprising. After all, creativity runs in the family.
Born in New Mexico and raised in New York on his mother’s Onondaga reservation, with yearly summer trips back to Santa Fe to see his father, Hyde got a well-rounded view of the arts from a young age. His family was already engrossed in the art world, with a modern dancer mother, stone sculptor father, and painter uncles to boot. And while Hyde did initially follow in the artistic footsteps of his precursors, he found that his true passion lied on a stage, not a canvas.
At the time, music was Hyde’s life plan, not painting. He started a rock band in Syracuse called “No Good Reason” with his friends, and from the ages of 14 to 18 the group chased stardom, going from open mic nights at bars to headlining iconic music venues across the country, including the Northrop. The band even landed a spot on a music CD next to the likes of Bonnie Raitt and the Indigo Girls for an Honor The Earth Campaign in the late ‘90s.
When life as a Syracusan local celebrity got old, Hyde made the decision to leave the music world behind, enrolling in college at the Institute of American Indian Arts for what he thought would be a creative writing degree. It wasn’t until he took his first arts elective, a run-of-the-mill studio class, when inspiration truly hit.
“That’s really where the bug took hold,” Hyde said. “Like, I was slowly not turning in my writing assignments on time because I was spending so much time in the painting studios. When I started, I knew I was going to make a commitment to live this life for the long haul, and I’m very fortunate that people have come along with me on the journey and that I’m still interested in what I do.”
At 21 he decided to turn art into his full-time profession, working in his studio and imitating his biggest artistic inspirations in a variety of styles, from Andy Warhol to Robert Rauschenberg. Almost 30 years later, Hyde, now living in Northfield, has shown his works of art all across the country, from the very college he graduated from, to the Smithsonian, to right here in the North Star state at Minneapolis’s All My Relations Arts.
Hyde’s art style is uniquely and unapologetically his. Subverting stereotypes is Hyde’s trade when it comes to his paintings, taking pop culture and studying it through a Native American lens in efforts to show how deeply his culture has become commodified and commercialized.
“Where my work exists is in that distance between the misunderstanding of appropriation and commodification,” Hyde said.
In the past, many of his collections have addressed and confronted several cultural appropriations that occurred in the public eye head-on. In 2013, he released a collection of paintings titled “In-Appropriate”, a series of satirical portraits depicting people wearing Native American regalia. One of the paintings, showcasing singer Gwen Stefani in a Native American headdress, was created in direct response to the singer’s band “No Doubt.” In 2012, the band faced online backlash after uploading a music video for their song “Looking Hot,” which was quickly taken down due to the group’s appropriation of Native American imagery and themes.
Hyde’s current exhibition, titled AL·TER·NA·TIVE, is a collection of previous paintings and sculptures he’s created over the years. The exhibition touches on a variety of topics, from pop culture to social media to technology, with a common thread of allegorical satire designed to make anyone who views it pause and reconsider.
“In the age of the internet, if I can make the viewer slow down for longer than five seconds or create conversation, then I have done my job,” Hyde said in an interview with PBS.
Despite the common themes of cultural commodification that exist as the driving forces behind his works, Hyde’s style is ever-changing, a quality he says he takes in stride. Much of the art world, to him, is dictated by what the market thinks will sell or be well-received. There has also been a standard placed on what Native American art should look like, a standard that Hyde actively makes an effort to go against and disprove.
“Those are choices I’ve made to not divulge any sort of cultural knowledge in my work. I started using more mark making, and intentionally not having paintings with feathers in them. That’s a freedom that non-Indigenous artists have. In this exhibition, I’m exploring the freedom of contemporary [Native] art that’s devoid of cultural signposts,” Hyde said.
Hyde’s decision to swim against the stream and carve out his own place in the art world is a result of what he calls an artist’s responsibility.
“I think an artist’s responsibility to their communities is to document the time that they live in. To comment on it, and, if necessary, critique it. I think art is born out of [activism.] It’s a megaphone for the people, the megaphone for the culture to be heard,” Hyde said.
AL·TER·NA·TIVE is on view until July 13 at All My Relations Arts in Minneapolis. On May 31, Hyde will stop by for an artist’s talk from 5-7 p.m. Admission is free.
