Northern Leopard Frog
- ink on tyvek
- Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez
-
Not For Sale
Northern Leopard Frog
Lithobates pipiens (Schreber)
Tébi'a (Umónhon)
The name for “frog” in Lakota is gnašká; according to one of anthropologist James R. Walker’s Lakota medicine-man informants, gnašká—the “Spirit of the Frog”—was the “patron of occult powers” (Lakota Belief and Ritual). But reading both of Walker’s books on Lakota “religion” reveals very little about what those “occult powers” involved. Walker’s caution and circumspection was a good thing in general. In many later writings about Lakota deities, the famous Wakan Tanka becomes an almost-Christian, monotheistic “Great Spirit”; but in Walker, Wakan Tanka “does nothing,” and the Lakota “did not know much about him.” (Even giving Wakan Tanka a gender is probably Walker’s patriarchal projection regarding the “Big Mystery,” which is a much better translation of Wakan Tanka.)
For this collection, the artist would like to acknowledge the following people:
Thomas Gannon, Associate Professor, English and Ethnnic Studies, UNL for writing the accompanying texts. Sofía F. Echeverry for her work as studio assistant.
Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez is a Colombo-American, mid-career artist with an interdisciplinary practice. She grew up in Colombia as the child of a Colombian and a United States citizen and migrated to the US as an adult. Her art is about the curious and intense experience of having physically migrated, yet still having a piece of herself rooted in Colombia. She is creating an intersectional feminist visual novel that is a multifaceted project comprised of paintings, sculptures, objects, and mixed media that together—and in different voices—weave a synchronicity of dialogues, passages, and punctuations about hybridity and cultural ownership.
- Created: June 2021
- Inventory Number: 20V.746.2021
- Current Location: University of Nebraska Lincoln - Enterprise Technology at Nebraska Hall - 1400 R St Lincoln, NE 68588 (google map)
- Collections: 1. New Acquisitions, University of Nebraska Lincoln