The Caliban Codex: mud,blood and spurious issues

The internationally known and respected Cherokee Indian artist Jimmie Durham created the conceptual mixed-media installation The Caliban Codex in anticipation of the 1992 quincentennial Columbian celebrations that were held throughout the Americas. He used Shakespeare's The Tempest as a vehicle by which to critique colonialism's appropriation of language and its power to assert colonial authority. He also addressed physiognomy as it was employed during the nineteenth century in a pseudo-scientific endeavour to ‘prove’ the biological legitimacy of racism. In each case Durham employed the methods of mimicry and mockery to address the ambivalent relationship between the coloniser and the colonised as it continues to be experienced.